THE HOUSE DOCTOR CONTEMPLATES SOME PEN ART FOR WORLD POETRY DAY

REVIEWING ONE OF MY FAVORITE SPRINGTIME POEMS

(Written by Sheila Gail Landgraf)

This is not your typical article about making a house a home; but if you think about it long enough you will agree with me that every home across the land would be vastly improved by the incorporation of the use of more poetry in our process of daily living.  You could frame a poem, or draw a poem, or paint a poem and hang it on your wall.  It would always be there to remind you of the things that you value the most.  

Poetry is one of the best ways we have for expressing our hopes and dreams for our homes.  This poem I present today expresses more about improving landscaping; the landscaping of our yards, as well as the landscaping of our souls.  So keep all of that in mind as you continue to read and hopefully you will come to understand that today's article really does fit into this column instead of going totally off-track with a random slip of deep poetry.

Today is World Poetry Day; and being a poet myself, I chose to celebrate by reviewing one of my favorite poems.  

I wanted this poem to express thoughts about springtime, and this poem written by Marge Piercy does that so well.  I love her poem so much that I  decided to forgo my own work and opted to review hers.  I hope you enjoy reading the review as much as I enjoyed creating it.

So please be very aware and alert to the note that this is not my own poem but simply a compilation of my thoughts about the poem.   

I've always considered this poem that follows to be SO beautiful and thought provoking.  I think of it every spring as the buds begin to form on the trees and the newness of life begins to happen all over again in nature.    

The Seven Of Pentacles

by 

Marge Piercy

Under a sky the color of pea soup she is looking at her work growing away there actively, thickly like grapevines or pole beans as things grow in the real world, slowly enough.  If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water, if you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter food, if the sun shines and you pick off caterpillars, if the praying mantis comes and the ladybugs and the bees,then the plants flourish, but at their own internal clock.

You cannot tell always by looking at what is happening.

More than half the tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.

Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet.

Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.

Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden.

Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar.

Live a life you can endure: Make love that is loving.

Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in,

a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us

interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.

reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.

This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,

for every gardener knows that after the digging, after

the planting,

after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.

Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.

Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.

Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen:

~ Marge Piercy ~

THOUGHTS AND REFLECTIONS ON THIS POEM

(by Sheila Gail Landgraf)

Please note right away  that I do not believe in the use of tarot cards; but I think the writer of this poem used one of a tarot card's descriptions because it fit the subject she was speaking about.   The seven of pentacles is the card that represents the material world, and I think she is striving for a good harvest, including spiritual things, in spite of the situation she finds herself living through at first in the actual physical universe.  She is aiming for a good finish, a completeness with a harvest that goes beyond being materialistic and crosses over to something much better.

 In a sense she is saying that life is like the draw of a card, you never know what will come about, but you take what you get and you make the most of it.  When you draw something from the material world, which the pentacle represents here; you might not at first get all that you had hoped for.  But she decides to take what she draws and she begins to build upon that, slowly but surely with intention.  She tends; she hopes; she stays alert to the things that she can change and the things that God will change if she asks Him to do so.  Most of all she is speaking of cultivating a life as if you are tending a crop; nurturing everything with life and patiently waiting for the results.  

When she gets to explaining how she will go about this the poem becomes even more interesting.  My favorite line in the whole poem is  "Make love that is loving."  Could anything be more profound?

I also love the line that says "build real houses."  It seems she is expressing a desire for a "home" over a house, a dwelling place where people can actually LIVE as opposed to a showcase for the outside world looking in.  

 I love many other things about this poem, but the thing that jumps off the page to me is that the author is awake to the processes of life, and the necessity for different seasons in order to reach a place of maturity in one's life.   I've always been obsessed with the fact that God created seasons for reasons.  I sense that the poet sees the same thing. 

She sees that what you do with each and every season matters as long as you are paying attention to what is truly real in the everydayness of your daily life.  She has a reverence and a patience with this process.  She plants, she tends, she waters, she waits, she harvests in the end. 

She rarely sits idle.  She always endures, no matter the season.  She trusts in the things she cannot always see, the things that have not yet been revealed that she knows are real, and she sees the magical way that they all somehow connect.  She knows the One who connects the dots.  She uses her nurturing of the earth to underline her connection with God.  Both things require faith and perseverance.  Both things require endless waiting for answers to unanswered questions.    

She knows by instinct that every little thing affects something else, no matter how small or insignificant.   From this she learns a carefulness for living out her life.  You can sense her treading softly upon the grass, not intruding upon the bird's nest, soothing and straightening the tiniest little plant that has toppled over in the bed.    

She is consistently aware of an invisible process that is always being orchestrated by something or someone unseen.  That "someone" for me, and hopefully her; is God.  The unseen process is the whole wonderful mystery of life that He alone can orchestrate with all its ups and downs and twists and turns.  She has learned to let Him be in control.  She tries not to interfere with what He is bringing about silently and unseen because she knows He has a better plan than she could conceive.

This poem expresses how God has hidden the mystery of life into every little thing.   

When she says "live a life you can endure" she is expressing the fact that we often are our own worst enemies.  We must be careful how we go through life, we must treat all relationships and all of creation with love and dignity in order for this bounty to endure and thrive and continue to bless us with a harvest.  We must progress beyond the seventh pentacle of the material and reach the spiritual.  

She knows that our life is full of growing seasons, times of reflection and times of meditation.  These are all valuable in the whole process.  Pausing here and there makes all the motion so much more meaningful in the end.  She is in awe of the process of God through the seasons of her life.

She sees that the harvest comes in the end, something we will celebrate and see when the time turns into the future.  The future is hopeful and makes the day-to-day more interesting.  She holds on to hope all the way through to the end.

These are truly the words of a woman who thrives in all seasons of life. 

 May we all be so blessed!