Category: Literary

For Marvin Bell

Lana Leave a comment

Poet Marvin Bell died last week. I had the opportunity to meet and work with him several times. He was always kind in his feedback and upbeat, excited about poetry and life in general. Rest in peace and poetry, Marvin. Here is a poem I wrote for him fourteen years ago, after his famous Dead Man poems.

The Dead Man and Haystacks

by Lana Hechtman Ayers © 2006

for Marvin Bell

1.The Dead Man At Haystack Rock, OR, July 2006

The Dead Man knows Haystack Rock is not one of the eight wonders of the world.

Still, he half-expected (his alive half) that it would be like another World’s Biggest Kielbasa in Chicopee or Half Dog-Half Deer outside Des Moines.

Roadside attractions and tourist destinations often turn out to be the way some enterprising folks bilk the low-intellect Americans of their not-so-hard-earned bucks.

The Kielbasa wasn’t much bigger than a picnic table.

The half and half dog simply had a bobbed tail and graceful stature.

But Haystack Rock takes the Dead man by surprise, he who’s seen so many rocks, above and below ground.

If he were a pre-teen he’d dub it Awesome.

At his wizened age, whatever that is, he calls it Awesome.

Despite all the photos, postcards, and paintings of it—its presence in person is awe-inspiring.

The scale, he thinks it must be or maybe that old Hebrew notion of the rock as God.

Whatever it is, it feels good sometimes to feel small.

With a perfection such as Haystack Rock before you, it lessen the burden of having to try to be

so perfect all the time.

It becomes obvious how fool-hardy the quest for perfection is for anyone, especially the Dead Man.

2. The Dead Man At Chailly, Sunrise 1865

The Dead Man finds himself in front of the most gargantuan haystack he’s ever seen—hay not rock.

The sun has already climbed midway, so that the haystack casts its shadow over him. 

The Dead Man is confused.

He knows he was just in Oregon, thinking about the shape of the stone and how it reminded him of something else he’d seen.

The Dead Man notices there’s something odd about this place. 

The sky seems to comprised of tiny dots of paint.

The haystack too, the green ground, the shadow, the distant blue mountains, all dots of paint.

Am I in need of glasses, am I going blind, is this a seizure? the Dead man wonders.

Just as the Dead Man is about to faint with worry, he remembers Monet, the painting.

This is the one that Monet painted before all the others.

It took Monet 25 more years to do that famous series of wheatstacks.

This is the haystack that started it all.

The Dead Man realizes he is standing inside the painting.

The Dead Man checks to see if he is also made of tiny dots of paint.

He is not.

Somehow the notion of art has transported him inside it.

The Dead Man decides Monet’s obsession with the scale and proportion and color of haystacks was more than justified but wonders about the 25 years of not painting haystacks.

A tribute to Pat Schneider

Lana 8 Comments

I’ve been grappling with the death on August 10th of Pat Schneider, founder of The Amherst Method of leading writing workshops. She was my workshop mentor, and taught me everything I know and love about facilitating groups for generative writing. But she taught me so much more than how to be an empathetic leader. She forever changed my life and how I thought about writing, including my own words. This poem is for Pat.

All Pat Schneider Taught Me

by Lana Hechtman Ayers

You never know at the time,
or at least I never have,
when a chance encounter
will change the course of your life,
and in my case, the flow of generosity,
not only away from the heart to others,
but back toward.

Having been writing since
I could manage a crayon between
my chunky thumb and index finger,
those words rushed and sloppy
were my life raft, a way of testifying
that was surviving daily assault
and still breathing, still willing
to keep breathing, but barely so.

Until I discovered the Amherst Method
casually perusing ads at the back of
a writer’s magazine, I was certain
my words had no use to others,
artless and overwhelming,
without value, and beyond that,
a waste of precious trees.

In that training circle
in the Amherst Writers Method
Pat Schneider’s living room,
I learned how to listen deeply,
not only to others, but to my own soul.
How its voice could raise a bell
in celebration with and for others.
How its lonely distant train whistle
on the night breeze could help
relieve others’ suffering.

In that sacred Amherst circle,
the voices around the room,
were as much my own as their own.
I learned listening is
the most active verb
and speaking is an act of generosity.
I learned forgiveness
of self and others
begins with the words written
on the page, then breathed out
by the lungs, flowing liquid oxygen
into the veins and every organ.
My life with words transformed
from despair to joy,
becoming charged with vitality,
with a soul-renewing energy.

In those precious days with Pat
in her cozy home,
my breath changed,
my heart changed.
I became a writer welcomed into
the family of writers,
as grand and myriad
as every human who has ever
spoken a syllable of their own truth.
And I learned to believe
my own truth could be art
as well as power.

Saturday Breakfasts, a tribute to my dad

Lana 6 Comments

My dad died nearly 30 years ago, but if he were still here, he’d turn 96 this week. Happy birthday in heaven, Dad.

Saturday Breakfasts

by Lana Ayers

My dad woke before the 5:30 AM alarm weekdays to ready himself for his hourlong commute to work as a maintenance man. Weekends too, he rose that early out of habit. On Saturdays he would trim the yew bush shrubberies, weed the garden, prune the leggy roses, sweep the driveway and the path leading to the house, all before starting the loud brassy gas lawnmower at 9:00 AM. The delay in mowing not so much to avoid waking the rest of us lazy lay-ins—my mother, my older brother, and me—but to remind us a Saturday is not to be wasted.

Upon hearing the grinding roar, my brother and I would throw off our covers and rush into the living room. Being six years older than me, it was understood my brother got to choose what we watched on TV. Dial on and channel clicked, monsters from outer space would fill the monochromatic screen. Though I would have preferred Bugs Bunny cartoons, I learned to love those science fiction B movies as much as my brother did.

After a half hour of mowing the small front lawn and driveway median strip of grass outside our 1955 brick ranch house, my dad would come in by the side door of the house that looked into the living room and peak at us. My brother and I sat cross-legged on the orange shag carpet, slurping sugary cereal from bright plastic bowls. Dad would shrug out of his grass- clipping-covered shoes which brought such a rich smell of life into the dark, dusty house. Then he’d step over to us in his socked feet to pat us each on the head. Often, there was a kiss instead of a pat. Sometimes both.

“That’s not a real breakfast,” Dad would say.

Sometimes I broke away from watching swamp monsters or crazed robots and followed my dad into small square kitchen made darker by brown cabinets in a single East facing window. Dad would begin his Saturday morning routine of removing all the ingredients for a cheese and egg scramble from the refrigerator—the only appliance that seemed to be changed out over the years: first a short stocky Norge that looked more like a bank safe, then an avocado green number, and finally the brown fridge with a darker frame of black—and set them on three-foot length of counter between the stove top and sink.

Next, he got out a mixing bowl from one cupboard, a frying pan from another, and finally a butter knife, spatula and whisk from the drawer below the mustard-yellow corded wall phone. My dad would whistle as he cracked eggs and stirred, not tunes I recognized, but always cheerful. He switched on the gas flame under the frying pan, which came on with a puff, like a teeny explosion. He flipped half a stick of butter off the knife and swirled the pan around, before pouring in the egg, milk, and American cheese mixture.

Dad whistled and stirred with the spatula for a few moments. When he stopped stirring, he went and removed four slices of bread from the wooden bread box on the counter next to the fridge, set those in the toaster beside it and pushed the plunger down. By this time, he’d call out “Plates” loudly if I were still in front of the TV; softly if I were there with him in the kitchen watching his nimble movements .

I would reach into the cabinet under the window and get out a stack of three dinner-sized plates, setting them on the counter next to the stove. My dad gathered clean forks from the green dish drainer next to the sink and handed them to me. A round Formica-topped table was shoved into the corner of the kitchen. Along with forks, I set out  a napkin for each of us from the vertical orange holder. Then, I got two glasses out of the dish drain and filled them with milk from the half-gallon carton in the fridge. Then I set butter dish in the center of the table. Dad reached for the percolator next to the toaster and poured a cup of coffee into his favorite mug–a translucent white glass Pyrex cup he’d gotten for free for filling his tank with gas at the Esso station.

“Hot and hearty, come and get it,” my dad would call to my brother.

Finally, when my brother and I were seated, my dad doled out the meal and presented the two of us each with a steaming plate of eggs and a slice of toast. Dad’s only reward to himself for cooking us breakfast was an extra piece of toast to go with his eggs.

Mother never woke early enough to be treated to the scramble feast. I always wondered if she somehow resented Dad usurping her kitchen. But my brother and I were delighted to partake in his generosity—a warm breakfast one day a week. Saturday breakfast was a meal that perfumed the house with eggy, cheesy, buttery aroma. I probably could have filled my belly up on the scent alone.

And my brother and I never minded missing a few minutes of the movies, reruns we’d seen dozens of times anyway. Dad never talked while we ate, busy buttering toast and chomping away, though he sometimes hummed between bites of cheesy, buttery eggs. The comfortable silence on these Saturday mornings of warm, satisfying breakfasts was one of the deepest expressions of love I experienced growing up. 

My lost loved ones are with me ever more now…

Lana 8 Comments

In this chaotic time of battling racism, illegal and immoral government actions, and the coronavirus pandemic, we hope to defeat them once and for all with as few lives harmed or lost as possible. And yet within the daily of strife of these, I feel my lost loved ones still with me somehow. The memory of their love helps get me through the darker days. This short piece below is about my dad, lost to me on this side of breath nearly three decades ago.

~ ~ ~

A Man of Few Words, But Good Ones

Lana Ayers

My father was a man of few words. He never started conversations. He left for work weekdays before I woke. But his absence made a deeper silence in the house than the quiet when he was at home. Back at 5:30 each workday night, he liked to change out of his coveralls uniform with lace-up boots, take a quick shower, and put on casual slacks in black or brown, with a plain tee shirt, his hairy toes wiggling out of the front of his beach-thong slippers.

Then he’d read the newspaper before supper, his cigarette sending untranslatable smoke signals up to the ceiling. Mother told my brother and me not to disturb him. He needed to unwind, but he never seemed like a ball of string to me.

At supper, we kids weren’t allowed to speak except to say pass the ketchup or are there more potatoes? But after our meal was finished, and after I swore I’d gotten all my homework done for the next day, my father was fair game.

Parked in his well-worn striped armchair, the black & white television tuned to a Knicks basketball game or a Cassius Clay boxing bout or to Bonanza, full of big hats and horses, my father sighed heavily and rooted for the good guys. C’mon, you can do it! It was then, without my mother or brother around, I asked him one the thousands of questions that floated around in my head day and night. The kind that drove my kindergarten and early grade teachers to tell me shut up and sit quietly—we’ve had enough out of you. But my father didn’t seem to mind.

“Daddy, why is the grass green?” I’d say.

“Because it sets such a nice backdrop for the yellow dandelions.” He mimed picking a flower and placing it behind his ear.

“Daddy, why do birds sing all the time?”

“Because they want to make Dean Martin jealous,” Daddy said, wiggling his eyebrows like Groucho Marx’s.

“Daddy, why do I have to eat peas? They taste like mush.”

“Peas are a secret weapon against sadness,” Daddy said, leaning over to where I sat at his feet to brush my forehead with his calloused hand. Rough as it was, nothing was ever so tender.

“Daddy, what is God?”

Daddy got up and clicked off the television knob. Back in the striped chair, he patted his thighs. I went to him and he pulled me up into his lap with ease, even though I was a chubby thing. I liked being so close to him I could count the hairs growing in each nostril, like dense, secret forests.

“God is the sky,” Daddy said, one arm hugging my back. “When you see the stars at night, that’s god. And in the daytime, the fluffy white clouds, those are god, too.”

“I thought God was like a person, only giant or something,” I said.

“The great thing about God is that each person can see God the way they want to. I look up at the sky and feel peaceful,” Daddy said.

“Even when it’s raining?”

“Even then. Rain makes everything grow. And quenches thirst.”

“Even when the clouds look like elephants or crazy clowns?” I said.

“Especially then,” Daddy said. “God is always up there for me. And for you, too. Like an upside-down ocean of goodness.”

“So why doesn’t god do anything when everything hurts so much?” I said.

“I know that’s hard to understand, Baby” Daddy said. “The universe is good, but some people in it aren’t always so good. You just have to keep believing in the good, that life can be good, even when things hurt.”

“I don’t know if I can do that, Daddy,” I said, hot tears dripping down my face.

He brushed my cheeks. “Well, until you can believe it for yourself, I’ll believe for you. When you look up at the sky, I’ll be a cloud, or fog, or the clearest blue, or the reddest star, radiating my love for you,” Daddy said. “Just remember to look up.”

Threads, a pandemic poem

Lana 2 Comments

My emotions have been all over the place in these last couple of weeks. It’s been so difficult to stay optimistic and motivated. I’m trying to focus as much as possible on blessings. Of which there are so many–clean water, fresh food, my pups and kitties, my husband, family, friends, the beauty of the natural world, the beauty of all the arts, that I am still here. Here’s a poem that I hope you’ll find uplifting. 

Lana Hechtman Ayers
  
 Threads
  
 Threads hang loose from
 the ties of my too robustly 
 laundered mask.
  
 Any day could be my last.
 This was true even before
 the coronavirus.
  
 But the sky distracts us
 with its palette of blues,
 its permanent drift.
  
 There’s a Buddhist rift
 in autonomy now,
 how probability
  
 shifts destiny as if
 fate was ever 
 more than poetry.
  
 The stars are themselves
 at last, clearer now
 without excess exhaust.
  
 Despite all human losses,
 summer blooms & blooms, 
 fragrances brighter.
  
 My personal regrets grow lighter,
 float off. Only what I can do 
 this moment matters.
  
 Old misgivings scatter 
 like dust motes in a breeze.
 I remember to breathe deeply,
  
 though breath is the way in
 for this unstoppable death,
 it’s also the only way to live.

The Color of Racism

Lana 13 Comments 
Lana Hechtman Ayers
  
The Color of Racism
             for Z.S.
  
 Winters, 
 my nephew drives a snowplow
 in a small Colorado town
 as white as the snow 
 he drives into high
 compressed banks.
  
 His skin is the color 
 of hickory bark 
 with the cinnamon glow 
 of youth his brief 
 twenty-three years affords.
  
 He’s shy but quick 
 to laugh, and when he does
 he tilts his chin down,
 looks up at you
 with his umber pupils
 from a doe-eyed angle.
  
 When I think of him
 so far away, commencing 
 his adult life in this 
 America,
 my heart contracts 
 with ache.
  
 Other seasons, he drives 
 the county pick-up,
 weeds and snips 
 courthouse shrubbery 
 into symmetrical shapes.
 Justice is not so
 manicured.
  
 My nephew’s skin 
 is the color of dew
 in midnight moonlight,
 a jewel on this earth
 living so far from those
 who love him.
  
 My nephew is a member
 of the brotherhood
 of all men,
 as we all are,
 with our varying
 degrees of melanin,
 but the same number
 of cytes to make
 precious brown pigment.
  
 & Some of us excel
 in pigment, my nephew’s
 skin rich, beautiful, 
 mine less so.

 Maybe you stood in line
 behind my nephew
 at Walmart,
 you just buying a gallon 
 of milk, his skin 
 the color of polite,
 said, go on ahead of me. 
  
 My nephew loves
 video games
 and pizza and burritos.
  
 Perhaps you know 
 a young man like him,
 or are the mother of 
 someone much like him, 
 or grandfather of, or teacher.
  
 Maybe my nephew has plowed
 your roadway, 
 or someone like him has,
 so the streets are safe 
 for you to pass.
  
 Maybe he mowed the grass
 in your neighborhood park
 so you could lie out 
 on sunny spring & summer days
 with your picnic and book,
 or play frisbee with friends,
 or toss a ball to your dog.
  
 My nephew loves dogs.
  
 If he’s been working hard,
 his skin glints
 as if lacquered with gold
 and if you’re lucky enough
 to behold it, my nephew’s
 contagious smile 
 will lighten your burdens
 for a while, 
 despite his dark skin.
  
 So when you ask me why
 I’m outraged 
 ask yourself why
 to white policemen 
 & 
 to white supremacists
 & 
 to whites who say they
 don’t see color,
 my nephew’s skin
 is the color of fear,
 the color of hatred,
 the color of oppression,
 the color of lynching
 in broad, bright daylight.

Close, Closer: a quarantine love poem

Lana Leave a comment 
Close, Closer
         a quarantine love poem

  
 breathe me 
         into a heat that flares
                 air tightening between us
  
 i burn within your eyes
         myself aflame & wondrous

 speak my name over & over
                 swirling vibrations around us

                         —antidote to isolation
 
i have loved you
         [inside of time]
                 ) outside of being (
  
         this moment is a trench

 i am the sea
         encompass galaxies of night

 you are moonrise
        & every 
                 gleaming
                         shadow



 © Lana Hechtman Ayers

Cosmogony

Lana 2 Comments 
 Cosmogony 
  
 Eavesdropping on night sky,
 I listen to the stars 
 whisper lines of verse
 to one another 
 across lightyears 
 in the electromagnetic
 language of god—
 each of the trillions of galaxies 
 intoning a celestial renga
 of chaos and creation.
 We humans, a mere
 comma in the endless poem.