Happy Monday! It felt like fall all last week and it was glorious. I know summer isn’t over, but the cooler temps and sleeping with windows open is the promise I needed that fall will return.

Dad ‘visited’ me over the weekend. Those of you who know me, know Dad passed away almost ten years ago–hard to believe–but also, as many of you understand, we feel the presence of our loved ones often and at times more intently than others. This weekend was one of those times.

As I mentioned last Monday, I’m getting ready for my annual writers’ workshop at Table Rock. Saturday night, I dreamed I was in the throes of actually packing, making sure the lights were off, various electronics were unplugged–did I turn off the fan?–trying to get out of the house because I was supposed to be leaving, and people who shouldn’t have been there, (old boyfriends–thanks DeAnn–classmates, neighbors, strangers I passed in Harris Teeter …) kept showing up turning things back on, taking clothes out of my suitcase, and generally just getting in my way!

But even more strangely, this was all happening in the house my family moved into when I was in the 5^th grade, the one my sisters and I closed up decades later after Dad died. Growing up, my bedroom was across the hall from a bathroom and in the dream my clothes were strewn between the two thanks to those uninvited guests who insisted the jeans I had weren’t ‘right’ and so simply tossed them aside. While I wandered between the front room, tv room, and kitchen turning off various appliances, I felt Dad in the house even though he never actually appeared. I never made it out the front door before the dream morphed into another one equally as entertaining.

Then yesterday at mass, our Offertory hymn was one we sang at Dad’s funeral, The Servant Song, by Richard Gillard. The hymn is one that exemplifies so much of who Dad (and Mom) was. Every time we sing it, I cry, barely getting through it. It reminds me of my dad, but it’s also a check to see if I’m living up to what my parents modeled, and how often I fall short.

I know why Dad was present this weekend. In last week’s post, I wrote about the challenges and fun of writing poems in traditional forms. I finished the call and response and golden shovel poems I mentioned (both still need some tweaking); the third I’m puzzling out is about my dad, titled A Ghazal for My Father. The pronunciation of ghazal rhymes with puzzle.

A ghazal is of Persian origin made up of between five and fifteen couplets– 2-line stanzas. Each line in a couplet has the same number of syllables. Each couplet on its own forms an image or story, but the stories are connected. The form is described as a necklace, each couplet being its own little bead strung together by a theme. There’s also a specific rhyme pattern that has to be followed. They’re often love poems.

The beads I’m playing with are moments with my dad, like: when I was in elementary school he’d wash my eyeglasses after I went to bed so the lenses would sparkle and be ready for me the next morning; playing catch in the back yard; the moment he realized I was growing up when he offered to take me to a special exhibition basketball game … and that first boyfriend had asked me to, too (we three sat together with me in the middle); the driving lessons; and moments of heartache too. It’s no wonder Dad’s hanging around.

Last week’s cooler weather came courtesy of rain and wind, which also uprooted one of our trees. Unfortunately, instead of toppling back into our woods, it fell across an access road making the road inaccessible. Hubby saw the situation as simply a task to be dealt with– call our tree-cutting people with the heavy-duty chainsaws and Tonka toy-like excavator and have them pay us a visit. I saw the task but we poets and writers also see things differently.

There was metaphor in the knot of kudzu, grapevine, and honeysuckle that tangled in the tree as it fell, how when something comes crashing down, it uproots and rips apart everything in its way. My fallen tree seemed the perfect image for our current political climate and all that’s being uprooted, torn away and apart in this moment.

It’s known that in times like these artists have always created important work to protest, to speak a truth, to document history. In times like these we all are encouraged to create things of beauty–a garden, a piece of needlework, a painting–anything to remind us of inherent goodness and to bring us peace. I’m trying to balance these two directives.

I don’t want to be silent or complicit in what’s going on politically. My call and response poem is definitely a protest poem and some readers were surprised at its intensity. I also don’t want all my poems to be angst and anger driven. That’s no fun … or healthy! A Ghazal for My Father is a ballast.

I listen to the words of The Servant Song “… we are here to help each other, walk the mile and bear the load … I will hold the Christ-light for you in the night-time of your fear …” and I think of two dear friends, each the parent of a Trans daughter. Being a servant means doing the hard and necessary work. Sometimes that means writing poems of protest and speaking out.  

It’s raining again as I finish this, but the heat returns later this week. May we find beauty in both. I hope you have a great week! I’ll be back at my window on Monday. I hope you will be, too.  

Here’s one rendition of The Servant Song.

Here’s an example of a ghazal, Hip Hop Ghazal by Patricia Smith. Can you find the rhyme pattern?