We Shall Overcome

A wise man said that we are in the midst
of a cultural revolution.  Once only white
men with property could vote. Then slaves
were freed, but there were poll taxes and many
ways their votes were suppressed. Women won
the vote nearly a hundred years ago, then those
with darker skin, then eighteen-year-olds. Some
old white men got scared When we with the
vote put a black man in the White House, they
got angry, and set out to take rights away
from all of us. So now they mimic the Nazis,
going after blacks, gays, women, even clean
air and water in a frenzy of freeing polluters
from restraint. It doesn't occur to them that 
they'll kill off their descendants. Meantime 
we are not idle. We who hold the majority of
the votes now are re-grouping, re-assessing,
teaching democracy. Remember our pledge?
"With liberty and justice for all"? We renew
our promises, take our stands, work quietly.
We are a democracy, not a Fascist state. We
form a circle, holding hands, standing firm.
We shall not be moved. Skin color shall not
separate us, nor sexual orientation. We know 
He or She has the whole world in Its hands.
We may suffer, but so have those who came
before us when they fought for freedom of
speech, freedom from having our homes
invaded, our lives discounted. We were raised
to believe in our human rights to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness. Hold tight. 
Don't ever let go. We shall overcome.

An age of miracles

Full Bloom 19  December 4,  2016

Focus on keeping your petals open 
to passing butterflies and honeybees.
Your immortality is already promised.
--- Full Bloom 4

The work on the new  book about my Grandmother Grace
has been all-consuming these months. It set off panic to
which I'm rarely subject. When I called, help came.
Now I see the end point coming. In ten days I can send
it to the publisher. Once more I stayed the course.
Anne says courage means you were vulnerable. I
learned to do what baffled me. Awake at 3 a.m.,
I wrote to re-find my courage. I even pulled the staff
of  the big New York and London publishers into
helping me. As I struggled for footing in a strange 
formatting world, and then my computer died, 
angels began to appear. Three knocked at my door. 
Doug came to set up a temporary computer so my 
book work could continue. My student Shirley,
gone a year for back surgery, stopped by, her hands 
full of egg boxes, soup, and honey. My neighbor Kevin, 
working with others next door to cut down trees and 
undergrowth, comes to show me how they cleared 
my land,too, and they want to do more, even cut 
firewood. Gratitude is inadequate to express what I feel.
I've lived within a gift-giving universe a long time, 
but now I'm in an age of miracles. 

We will fight if harm threatens

Full Bloom 17, November 20, 2016

There's color in the treetops now,
though fading.  Arctic air reminds
me that winter won't be denied us
who live in the temperate zones. I
walk the dog early to let her continue
her winter nap. There are wings in
and out of the feeder.  I mix sponge
for bread, light the fire I laid a week
ago. Sun was stronger then, and its
heat against the storm door warmed
me. The dog curls tight, hides her
nose; the hens, oblivious of cold,
rush into the orchard. Bach's music
lulls me to sleep. I have climbed
that sharp curve the publisher of
Grace gave me.  Voices comfort me.
My daughter wants me to come for
Thanksgiving dinner and bring
pumpkin pie. Women in my 
community agree: we will fight 
if harm threatens.  We won't be pushed
back to the fifties and its many
discriminations. We remember "with
liberty and justice for all." Never
perfectly  kept, but not denied either.
Our enemies will learn humility
at our hands or at Someone Else's. 

Gene Dillard, Mosaic Artist 2016

My friend Gene Dillard, once in my poetry classes, began working in mosaic art a few years back, and having covered his garage walls, he began on the inside of his house, and now is working on the outside.  These mosaics take about a year to complete a side, and mean piecing tiny pieces of tile or glass patiently hour after hour. He finds it a way to meditate.  What do you think?  Back in 2004, he spent a year in Honduras with the Peace Corps, building things--water systems as I remember--and writing poems in his spare time.  I've added in a few poems.  Aren't these beautiful?  Judy Hogan

***

The right side of the front of the house.

***
After only one week,
routine is sneaking
up the valley
like a cloud band,
seducing my mind.
Too soon I forget
how the new Honduran culture
embraced my heart
in its strong Latin hands,
then tore it open,
exposing me to new houses,
foods, cobblestone calles.
Everything attained a new height.
For a brief time
I had slipped

my cultural bondage.

***

Driveway side of house, recently completed, with sun on its mirrors.

***

Inside of Gene's house, with ceiling, doorways in mosaic.

***

           BANANAS

I saw his bent frame

walking toward the Mercado,

across his shoulders

a large pole with

huge bunches of bananas

hanging from each side.

Images rippled 

through my mind 

like corrugated sheet metal

used for roofing

in the third world

I thought he was a troubadour

carrying many fascinating

odes encased with

a protective outer skin,

waiting for a chance

to recite.

***

Front of garage was his first wall mosaic, but he has also done the side you see to the left.

***

Here is the new tree, with mosaic leaves, house behind it.

***

                        CEIBA TREES

In the silence of Copan Ruins

the wind blows

through the Ceiba trees,

a symbol for the Mayans

of the ever present

spiritual world.

I am reminded

 by the moaning wind,

as I view the deserted temples

that I am alone.

My loneliness forms itself into

dew droplets on the Ceiba leaves,

drips on to the stone reliefs

that make up this city.

***

Don't forget the chimney, and see if you can find Gene up there!

Making Grace Immortal

Margaret Roys Stevenson, my mother at age three on their cottage steps in Kuling, the resort for missionaries in China, 1915.

***
Full Bloom 7 September 11, 2016

Summer wanes at long last.
I will be eighty next spring.
September lets in cooler air.
The hill I climb is steep.  A gift
to publish Grace’s diary after
years of digging out its secrets.
In some way I fulfill her and
give away all she lost.  Then,
after these eighty days of work,
I can turn back to my life story
and my Russian love.  Now 
Grace comes first–impulsive,
elusive, funny, unpredictable,
and ultimately unreliable for
her children and her husband.
So, confined, declared insane, 
operated on as a means of control:
shock treatment, hysterectomy.
Yet she still loved to play the piano
and laugh.  As she lay dying of
cancer, Mother reported that she
was sane. She took her a rabbit, 
offered a ride wherever she would 
like to go.  Grace chose the mental
hospital to see her friends.  She had 
loved China; Norman, Oklahoma 
was never home.  When Gracie
died, she was inconsolable and 
ran away, looking for a stricter
faith, a strait-jacket that would
hold her together, and then was 
found wandering along a railroad 
track. My grandfather never tried 
to stop her, so the looney bin was 
where she lived too many years.  
She was sixty-four when she died 
and left fear behind for other people:
my mother, her brothers, and their
children.  Now I give her early,
happy life away to others.  The gift
she had was too heavy for her, too
hard to balance.  Now I carry it,
must let it lie lightly on my shoulders,
not heavy on my heart.  I’m stronger,
wiser, and people have helped me, will 

still help me make Grace immortal, too.

***

Christmas 1913, on the steps of their Nanking home:  left to right, Grace, Jeanie, her younger sister, holding Margaret, Charlie, Grace's younger brother, and Samuel Isett Woodbridge, her father.

Who Was My Grandmother Grace?

Grace Roys, holding Richard, with Margaret, my mother, beside her, 1914, Nanking, China

***

Full Bloom 6 September 4, 2016

[Written two days after I learned my book about Grace and Harvey Roys, my maternal grandparents would be published by Wipf and Stock of Eugene, Oregon]

Another turn in my life’s path.
Many threads are knotted.  Who
knew this was possible?  It began
with a question: Who was my 
Grandmother Grace?  She shaped
my childhood.  Her mental illness
frightened Mother, and we knew
we should take care not to be 
too smart, too high-strung, too
interested in sex, too artistic.
Yet we were all that and normal.
Grace was sometimes normal, 
then lost her balance when her
eight-year-old daughter died and
never completely recovered. 
Mother never got over her fear.  
I explored, learned of Grace’s
beauty, her mischief, her will
to have her way, her going to
the sick Chinese in the night,
her love of her babies, her music,
her fluent Chinese and many 
friends, her breaking her marriage
vows and running away.  She 
dreamt she was in Heaven with 
Gracie.  She brought us rabbits at
Easter, and got our hair cut without
asking permission.  Gladiolas and 
cats were her passion.  She tried
to be good, but she jumped her
fences too often. I inherited her 
gift, lost in her; in me, full bloom.

***

Grace and Harvey Roys in Kuling, China, probably 1912.

Time Is Limited For All of Us

Full Bloom 13 October 23, 2016

For My Thursday Class Students Fall 2016

Two hundred years ago it was an acorn
like the thousands that fell on my roof this
year. 1816 or so. Jane Austen was alive
but not for much longer.  Here dwelt early
land grant men with their slaves.  My house
was built on the foundation of a slave-owner’s
house, and around it oaks.  They bring shelter,
shade, help with air pollution, beauty. I love
their sheer strength. To look long at a large
oak, tall and wide-spreading, is to take in
its power and peacefulness. When I moved
here, there were five: three in front, one
on each side. In eighteen years one in front
died and cast down all its limbs. Now
the largest, the Champion Black Oak is 
casting limbs, and the hurricane took
a large number.  They have hung over
my roof.  As neighbors we are close, 
so this oak belonged to Robert and Emma 
when it was named champion. Now it’s 
Chloe’s, but I’m the one who loved it. 
Robert promised not to cut it down. 
Then he died, and Chloe came.  I told her
yesterday that it had died and bigger limbs
might fall.  I was at risk more than she,
but it could hit the power line between
our homes and start a fire. I called our 
electric company. They sent a truck to
have a look. Shawn came to clear the
branches off the roof, found a hole where
a sharp limb had punctured the shingles, 
fixed it. I said he could wait, but he did
it the same afternoon.  Its grand beauty
is going fast. No green leaves this year.
A limb span still extending wide with roots
under both our homes. That full bloom has
ended, and we must expect its decay. Helen
started me worrying, but I didn’t want 
to act yet. Too many other urgencies.
Then came Hurricane Matthew.  Limbs
pounded down above my head. Time is
limited for us all.  I still teach, write,
publish, garden, care for hens, my dog,
other people, and fight coal ash dumping.
I do forget things, make more mistakes,
get lost more often in unfamiliar places.
I know my leaves will fall, then my limbs.
A deadline can be scary, even if you don’t
know when it is.  For now my colors are
lively.  Memories return. I check myself 
in case of errors, let other people help me,
and they do. Why I don’t know. Sometimes
I don’t even ask.  Let me leave behind a 
memory of wide-spreading branches,
shading leaves, home-anchoring roots,
and a vitality that stays in other peoples’
minds long after I’m gone.