I was going to write about my rekindled love affair with William Butler Yeats, but he will have to wait. Because today all I can think about are the leaves and Lucille Clifton. I have to start by saying I cannot describe the brilliance of the trees today.
We’re lucky to live in a small stand of maples on Gleason Lake about fifteen minutes west of downtown Minneapolis. I enjoy these trees in the spring when the shadowy green of their leaves emerges after the long winter and, of course, in the summer when they reach their deep glory to cover our lane allowing only a few rays of sun, yet it is now in October when they tell the real story. The trees scream out: “See it only gets better because we will soon do it all over again.”
Yesterday in our poetry class, Deborah Keenan brought in this poem by Lucille Clifton:
the lesson of the falling leaves
the leaves believe
such letting go is love
such love is faith
such faith is grace
such grace is god
i agree with the leaves
A few years ago when I was under the spell of Lucille Clifton, I wrote a poem inspired by her. I bring this poem to you because not only did Lucille Clifton lead the way and help me see the leaves and state my credo, but also because the poem shows how what others write can lead us to what we can write. Without Lucille Clifton, I could never have written this poem. I owe her gratitude–and the leaves too for all their lessons. _______________________________________
What the Leaves Believe
After Lucille Clifton
that they will fall
and wither on the ground
that they will have gone to
all that trouble
to make abundance
to make glory
all that trouble every spring
to fill those branches
so full that a bird is lost
in their midst
and then gone
leaving the bare bones
the bare black bones of branches
what the leaves believe
is what I believe
––Vicky Lettmann
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Writing Idea: What do you have to say about this time of year? about the leaves? Seasons appear in all genres, so if you’re writing memoir, go in your memory bank to fall. Try picking one fall: the fall when you went to junior high, the fall you learned to drive, the fall your father died. Fall on the east coast of North Carolina is not like fall in Minnesota. Give us your fall. Go for ten minutes–just write it out without over-thinking. Smells, colors, sounds, feelings, the light. That kind of thing.
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Next blog, I promise: “My Love Affair with William Butler Yeats” (R rated)
Nice job, Vicky. Lucille Clifton is a favorite of mine too. I’m so in awe of the spare glory of many of her poems. You did her justice. I like what you’ve done.
Thanks, Janet. I’ve been reading her again and watching some of her videos on YouTube. What a strong woman and a poet who knows how to say the most with the fewest words. Love her “homage to my hips”. See: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/179615
I got one of those chain e-mails for which I was supposed to send an inspirational poem to 10 people. I declined to participate because “homage to my hips” had been particularly inspirational to me that day – not exactly what they had in mind.
I’d say you couldn’t find a more inspirational poem than “homage to my hips”! Next time, go for it!
I’m such a fan of Clifton’s. Sobbed through her reading of her shape-shifter poems at a standing-room-only reading in Princeton. Here’s a poem by Janet Joyner from the anthology, “Flying South.”
2 Yellow Leaves by Georgia O’Keeffe
It is so yellow, butter yellow,
like a dream of yellow, of a nimbused sun,
that at first you wonder why the leaves
at all; and then your eye registers the
brown on the fringes, or shading
the contours rising from stem and veins,
liltingly, like stitched quilting, telling
this story of the top one, the smaller
leaf, as it rest lightly there
on the slightest of diagonals and almost
caters to the leftward swerve ordered
by its venial tip, reminiscent of her
own hands Stieglitz posed
like petals askance, that leads to the green
dentelated edge and base of the leaf below,
introducing a new tale, one of asymmetry
and chlorophyll, of how or why it
chooses to go and cede its blade to this
color, this yellow, like a prologue
celebrating while lamenting the flight
of light, making us look, really look,
until her limpid, yellow lindens
both crop and enlarge
the composition of this world
the way she meant it to.
Thank you for sharing this poem, Carol. Janet Joyner captures in words (and O’Keefe in colors) the amazing yellow of these leaves here today. “…this yellow, like a prologue celebrating while lamenting the flight/of light, making us look, really look….” I’ll have to see if I can find this Georgia O’Keefe painting. Our street today is glorious yellow. These maples doing their best to blind me, to make me “really look.”
Beautiful poem, Vicky.
Thank you, Susan. I look forward to seeing you in an equally beautiful part of our world, Sanibel.