Transformations

on molting and the seasons

Yesterday, over a period of many hours, I spied on a wild rabbit. When it slow-hopped into the yard, I thought it was sick or injured by the feral cat I had seen earlier. Along with moving slowly, the rabbit was burdened by an overgrowth of fur, and one ear appeared to hang low. With its seeming bulk and droopy ear, I thought it was perhaps a lost pet. It spent the day in the same spot, alternately grooming and resting. Eventually, I realized it was neither sick nor lost but molting. Just before dusk, I looked out and saw a compact newly sleek cottontail leave the shelter of the hedge and hop away.

I thought about that, transformation and how we are taught to think of it as becoming something new and startling. But not all forms of transformation are as spectacular as a butterfly slipping out of its chrysalis. A snake, having shed its skin, is still a snake. The cottontail molting in furry disarray is still a cottontail - still speckled grey and brown when the molt is complete. Sometimes transformation is just renewal - a returning to the self. We pause - briefly naked, briefly mussed - and rest in the rebirth of turning and returning, of feeling our underbellies exposed to fate, to fear, and to being ourselves again.

Some writing is like that – we have ideas, try writing prompts, and sometimes we end up with a butterfly but most often we just get writing, a variation of a poem we’ve written before or one that is as dull as we ourselves are. We can spend the day paring it down, grooming it, leave the fluff behind, and move on ready to meet the world. Or just accept it as is. That is transformation, too.

The two poems below are from writing prompts presented at the League of Minnesota Poetry Conference. I give them to you here as they wandered into the yard with their irregular gait and overabundance of fur. It will take more than a few afternoons of grooming to see what they might become or if they are already happy in themselves, content to carry the burden of what they are into the winter season.

In the first prompt, singer songwriter Katy Tessman in her workshop Sing Me A Poem asked us to write a poem inspired by a favorite poem or poet. My mind immediately went to the Adrienne Rich poem “Am I Lonely” which when I looked it up after my “freewrite” is actually titled “Song”.

Song for Adrienne Rich
By Laura L. Hansen

You ask me if I am lonely
and I say yes, lonely
as a river with no time
for stopping, lonely as
the last Sunflower in
the September garden
spilling its seeds of 
hope like a desolation.
You ask me if I’m 
lonely – yes. Lonely
as the last peach 
on the plate, perfectly
ripe and ready
for eating -
yes.

“Song” – Adrienne Rich

You’re wondering if I’m lonely:
OK then, yes, I’m lonely
as a plane rides lonely and level
on its radio beam, aiming
across the Rockies
for the blue-strung aisles
of an airfield on the ocean.

You want to ask, am I lonely?
Well, of course, lonely
as a woman driving across country
day after day, leaving behind
mile after mile
little towns she might have stopped
and lived and died in, lonely

If I’m lonely
it must be the loneliness
of waking first, of breathing
dawn’s first cold breath on the city
of being the one awake
in a house wrapped in sleep

If I’m lonely
it’s with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore
in the last red light of the year
that knows what it is, that knows it’s neither
ice nor mud nor winter light
but wood, with a gift for burning.

From Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972. Adrienne Rich.

https://drunkenlibrary.com/2018/10/26/song-adrienne-rich/

Gawd, how I love that poem!

The second prompt from Tessman was to write “a draft of myself”. (There was more behind the instruction, but I didn’t write it down.)

R655.03 The Bookman’s Glossary Photo by Laura Hansen

The Bookbinder
By Laura L. Hansen

I’ve taken years to write this life
into a story I can recognize. 
I’ve written long chapters;
I’ve written short stories.
I’ve plagiarized, but today
this story is my own
and I am going to bind it
into a book – nothing
gilt-edged, nothing fancy,
just a Plain Jane binding 
slathered in glue.
I’m going to trim the edges,
stitch up the spine
and try to hold it all together. 
I’m not going to live
like a sheaf in the wind.
I’m bound. I’m whole.
The end. 

Katy Tessman (https://www.katytessman.com/

Well, rabbits molting, songwriters and poets, prompts and drafts, and binding it all together. That’s me for now. See you on the Substack night side soon.