Thoughts on Katyn

A poem I wrote upon hearing of the death of the Polish leaders last week:

Katyn                     April 15, 2010

A husk of a fuselage sits

in the flattened circle of burnt tree

trunks. Our Solidarity is that our

history moves in perfect centennial

circles. A phone rings in Russia. A

phone rings in the forest. While

you were sitting here preparing your

souls to remember that loud

invisible moment in these woods,

it happened again. Things fall

out of hands. Some sit down

very slowly. A man standing to t he right

of the podium out of respect

for the one who will not speak

today reddens and tears saturate

his mustache. Become

a grain barge drifting down the

Vistula to Gdańsk‎ in another

century. A horse drawn plow turns

up a rusted Teutonic sword, too

heavy to lift with one hand. Our

ancestors were made of stronger stuff.

Our word for Strike was God. Think of

Anna Walentynowicz, and a picture

of Our Lady of Czestochowa in

a plastic folder hanging on the

gates of the docks. And only five

years ago—the Pope. September,

October, Oswiecim, Siberia. How

can we bear to consider the loss

of the sites your eyes beheld

when your death by fire tells us,

tells us with a bell of judgment

that we must see such thing

ourselves? We are headless in the

highway of all armies, and there is no

one to blame but God,

who is on our side,

and always kills the mourners.

The Second Go Around...

Well, gardening season is starting back up again. We've managed to pick our snow plower's generous helpings of gravel out of the lawn before the grass really takes off, thanks to two small press-ganged cousins of mine. Our next pre-big spring growth spurt tasks will include digging a big ol' hole for the forsythia, moving all our blueberriy bushes (such as they are) down the hill, and relocating the last of those ratty old lilies before we have to re-till their intended bed.

Then, the big job begins: We are going to take everything out of the garden, reorganize the beds, and start all over again. I had hoped we would have finished all this last year, but it was not to be. Lack of labor and lack of time really ate things up, but this summer I'll have my boyfriend Chris back home to help with the heavy stuff, my squad of gardening cousins, young and old, and my mother Jane is going to pay me for my own efforts so that I can consider this my job, and thus have more time to devout to it!

Here's Thomas, one of my little helpers, rooting around with our dear Sheltie Baxter in was is currently the far bed. Everything in this bed is tilled and has been living under black plastic for almost a year. Between him and the car are the last of the wayward lilies, and that jungle of spearmint will have to go too. It's so invasive, we probably won't put it back in the garden; I'll probably transplant it into the one of thew fields where it can do it's thing uninterrupted. I'd hate to lose it altogether, because the stuff is wonderful. I've been steeping it in my tea and I love it!

Yep, everything must go. Part of this initiative came out of the fact that we can't get our lawnmower down the original paths that Jane designed. We were going to leave the large bush on the right, but I kid you not the damned thing was blown clear out of the ground last autumn and we found it in the road way down the hill. Looks like we're gonna need something else to hide our view of the neighbor's cars.