Status Update

Posted on by Erin Bartels

It’s spring, which for me generally means poetry. I don’t know why, but I tend to write more poetry as the weather changes over from winter to spring than at any other time of the year. Today is the first day of spring. It’s also been nearly a week of social distancing and grocery hoarding and constant talk of Covid-19 on social media. I was on Twitter briefly today and felt that “I should post something” feeling. I second later, I closed Twitter and wrote this.

 

Status Update

I have nothing to say
yet I must say it—
that I have nothing to say—
nothing interesting
nothing clever
nothing controversial
(whether intended or otherwise)
I have nothing to say
to any of you
but I must say something
because you are out there
scrolling
wanting to see
what people have to say
(not me, necessarily)
just anyone
anything to fill the silence
I must somehow say nothing
so it seems like something
to you
I must fill in your space
and you must fill in mine
as far as the character count
will allow, as far as
meaning can be stretched—
spread over barren lives
like white paint
over white canvas
adding up to so much
nothing
filling an emptiness
that was not there
until the possibility of filling it was

A Prayer for the Current Crisis

Posted on by Erin Bartels

Hunkered down at home
my mind reaches out
to friends, yes, but more so
to their parents, my parents—
that generation the younger
set so despises, so blames
for all our planet’s woes
as though every generation
hasn’t done something (many things)
they couldn’t see the end of
things they would take back if they could

as though their own generation
will never make mistakes

I think of the moms and dads
who fed me during sleepovers
who took me to plays
who coached me in summer-dry fields
who taught me that, yes, defeat may come
but that should never mean I didn’t try
every second of every game

I call them to mind, one by one
and pray for closed doors
for stocked pantries
for clear lungs

And I pray for that younger set as well
who live from paycheck to paycheck
who have small children at home
who just started a business
whose product just launched
whose education has stalled
whose future is uncertain

I call them to mind
and pray for patience
and perseverance
and peace

I especially pray
that we would all get off the internet
and find ways of being

really
truly
present

A Poem for the Spring Thaw

Posted on by Erin Bartels

Lenten Rose

 

 

 

 

 

The world melts around me
as the sun caresses
the contours of my city.

A robin addresses
blue sky studded by
clouds hurrying past —

Don’t linger here! Fly! Fly! —
Do I spy a blade of grass?
Or is this mere flirtation?

A sly come hither glance?
Who cares? On this temptation
I’ll blithely take a chance.

 

Because it snowed 10 inches the other day, and I need this…

Posted on by Erin Bartels

BlandfordinSpringSkinny
A Light Exists in Spring
by Emily Dickinson

A light exists in spring
Not present on the year
At any other period.
When March is scarcely here

A color stands abroad
On solitary hills
That science cannot overtake,
But human nature feels.

It waits upon the lawn;
It shows the furthest tree
Upon the furthest slope we know;
It almost speaks to me.

Then, as horizons step,
Or noons report away,
Without the formula of sound,
It passes, and we stay:

A quality of loss
Affecting our content,
As trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a sacrament.

Alison’s Poem and the East Lansing Poetry Attack

Posted on by Erin Bartels

This past week I was pleased to open an email from the nice folks in charge of the East Lansing Poetry Attack that read in part, “Your poem Alison’s Poem is destined for a tree in East Lansing.” Readers of my old blog may have seen this before, but I couldn’t find it anywhere here at A Beautiful Fiction, so I’ll share it now. I wrote “Alison’s Poem”  on the morning of my sister Alison’s March 24th birthday a few years back. Older than me by less than two years, Alison is the firstborn of the family, but not the first conceived. I was thinking about how my mother must have felt to see her after a miscarriage during her first pregnancy, and so I wrote this…

Alison’s Poem

Clear dawn over the snow-dusted lawn
Deep gray gives way to a subtle ray
Then bright and vibrant hues chase the night
Sweet pink, then yellow—orange—green, I think
So fades cold evening to the next day
So things of winter melt into spring

The poem will be displayed this Sunday, April 26th, at 1-4 PM in the trees in front of the East Lansing Public Library as part of the 3rd Annual East Lansing Poetry Attack. Some of the poems will later be moved to city hall and displayed during the East Lansing Art Fair, May 16-18. More details on their Facebook page.

Writing for Our Better Selves

Posted on by Erin Bartels

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

These are the first lines of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh, a poem in nine books which was particularly beloved of Emily Dickinson. I’m just diving in to my copy, an 1884 printing of the 1859 text. This quote strikes me, a professional copywriter who is ever writing for others, as a lovely, selfish thought. That is what my fiction is–writing for me, for my better self.

One Morning In March

Posted on by Erin Bartels

Spring is a time for poetry. And so I share with you what I wrote this morning.

One Morning in March

It is March,
still winter,
and the white sky
seeks to remind us of it,
hunching low over the bare treetops
like a fog.

Yet this day we recall
that we did not
settle upon a glacier
or the icy moon Europa,
but upon earth.

Grass,
brown and bored,
peeks from beneath
the serrated grimaces of soiled snowbanks,
so reluctant to give any ground
to spring.

Traffic lanes and parking spots
we had forgotten
grow at the margins of this white world
like the black beaches of some volcanic island
still forming.

The wreckage
of the ice storm emerges
like an ancient ruined metropolis.
Oh, yes, we say,
I remember that storm.
Only the snow made me forget.

I pick up the keys
I dropped in the driveway—
the first dirt
to work its way under my fingernails
since November.

Inside
the dog’s muddy prints
on the kitchen floor
don’t raise my ire.
I don’t sigh and say, “Sasha!”
as I might have.

We shake ourselves awake
at the birds.
Birds.
That’s right, we say
in wonder.
There are birds.

Thoughts upon Entering My Mid-Thirties

Posted on by Erin Bartels

When I was a child with elastic skin
I sat in the bathroom
and wondered at my mother’s eyelids
stretched into narrow fissures of flesh
by a finger at the corner
then traced with a brown pencil.

Now my son builds imaginary worlds
in the other room
unaware that I am looking in a mirror
stretching my eyelids into fissures of flesh
with a finger at the corner
and tracing them with a brown pencil.