This Bird Has Flown

contribution for one of Susan's students.

This Bird Has Flown


I thought I'd call her today
a little too late.

I'll always recall how she drew us out,
Frightened children, who wanted to do it,
but couldn't even say it.
From Keats to Byron to Shelly and the Bard,
We struggled to find words for our hearts,
and meaning in our basest needs.

Then the day came to test our wings.
We fluttered and floundered and some of us soared.
Oldest pains, deepest dreams, lusts for life
spilled off pages from our mouths into those hearts
with an ear for the fantastic and a lust for life.

We then left and never came back.
A few times we'd call, or drop by and talk,
but mostly we lived - check to check.

I took orders, then traded columns for murderers,
then dug for humor once more.
All the while thinking about the eagle soaring high above me
The bluejay fluttering outside my grasp
and the dove who left me under the cinnimon tree
Alone.
This bird has flown.

My wings, black, couldn't beat air,
but as I started to heal, I began to run:
Beating pavement for a cure to the silence that grows,
cutting and keeping us from long-life of laughter.

Away from my pen, I try to fly again,
If only short bursts.
I still long to be a paperback writer
Still long for the night when my soal took flight,
riding after the breeze with a girl with corn-silk hair
who shared her mother's grin;
Hopefully never her end.

So I look up that friend who gave me leaves of wisdom,
a gift to a fledgling just beginning to take joy.
Hoping to hear she's well,
still beating wings against the wind.

But alas. The branch is bare.
The air is still.
And I find I've returned to the nest too late to tell her,
simply,
Thank you.


-- Phil Attinger, on the teacher who gave me wings.

My Very Special Aunt

Lexie wrote this in December of 2006. She was given an assignment to write about her favorite relative. She is 9 years and in the 4th grade.

My Very Special Aunt
By Lexie Hubbard

My Aunt Susie is wonderful. She lives in Alabama. Susie collects nun figurines. She also has a poetry award named after her! The bad thing is she was diagnosed with cancer in her liver. I hope she will be get better!
Aunt Susie wears rectangular glasses. She also wears a blonde wig because she lost it (her hair) when she was diagnosed for the second time. Susie is about my height.
She always says pleasant things. I think “I love you” are her favorite words. She jokes around and says, Lexie, Lexie, Lexie, Bo, Bexie, Bexie, Bexie. It always makes me laugh!
Susie loves to write long poetry and four-lined poetry. She is fighting cancer for the third time. Still, she’s living life to the fullest.
Aunt Susie is very funny and so nice. She is a magnificent person because no what mood she’s in, she’s still great. I want to be just like her (except for the cancer part).

Susie's service - funny thought

On Tuesday Andy and I went by the funeral home - he had to pay the bill. The guy who helped out at the memorial service was there. He made a comment to us about what a nice service it was and that it was real personal.

I'm out running this a.m. and I strart thinking about that comment. Here's a nice Alabama boy (he's maybe 30) who probably sits through 40+ services a year. He's heard Amazing Grace and the 23rd Psalm a hundred times. He's spacing out in the back of the church, when suddenly he hears the words "sex incarnate" - Provie is reading the Jesus poem! LOLOL! I'll bet he perked right up and started listening. And I'll betcha he told a lot of people about the crazy/awesome poem that was read at this lady's service on Saturday.

And Susie would so LOVE that. She LOVED rattling the southerners!

I'm missing you Babasues.

xoxoxo - Amy

Gems from Lexie

Lexie is Susie's great niece. They appear to have been cut from the same cloth - bookish, writer types with great senses of humor. Here is some stuff Lexie wrote about "Babasues".


Susie Methvin

S is for survivor of breast cancer

U is for unbelievable

S is for super silly

I is for incredible poet

E is for English professor


M is for my idol

E is for excellent

T is for terrific

H is for helping hand

V is for very nice

I is for interested in art

N is for never-ending life

Written by Lexie Hubbard (Grandniece – 9 years old) in the Denver Airport on the way to Susie’s Memorial.

Annunciation

ANNUNCIATION


Oh, to be this angel!
On this particular mission!
Dressed for the occasion!
Fra Giovanni De Fiesole has swept the canvas
with ivory, hot pink and gold.
Her wings extend through the portico.
One foot forward, she leans toward Mary.
A tapered finger cautions;
another points to the Virgin, a supporting player.
The angel's knee bends beneath the gold embroidered gown;
a medallioned aura frames elaborate hair.
The sin of the first parents, rear stage left,
is a bad memory, a shadow, as the dove
hovers above Mary's head.
The angel makes her announcement with savoir faire.
This is the story that will frame her life.
This is why she was made to be.


Susan Herport Methvin

Soon a Wedding

Read by me also at the memorial service. This is not the exact version I read. The one I read started "I'm a buffoon" - which I thought was great. But this is a gorgeous poem and I lost it on the magic carpet part - crying! ;-)


SOON A WEDDING

For Mandy and James

I'm dancing,
trying to catch my heart
before it flies into the widest
atmosphere. Tomorrow I'll dice
hairless carrots for a soup,
beat eight eggs for your own
chocolate torte. I'll pack the van
with fat Greek olives, feta,
and artichoke hearts, then
yards of ivory tulle,
an Arabian carpet for flight
on nights when your love
brims over like the honey comb
and you want to be alone
in the stars, hanging from Orion's belt,
and laughing 'til you cry, your tears
nourishing dry summer fields
and violets shaded
by the dappled rice of Queen Anne's Lace.



Susan Herport Methvin

Kudzu

Written for Andy. I considered it for the service, but knew I couldn't get through it.



KUDZU

The kudzu grows overnight, climbing
every rock, shrub, tree.
Try to pull it, the roots hold tight.
Try to cut it, the stems are roped steel.
Spray it with poison, and it turns in upon itself
for air and water while beneath its leaves,
blooms a lovely purple flower.
Kudzu's roots deepen down dark so that even memory
can't begin to find where they start.

In the sunlight by our land where kudzu grows,
the two of us stand, neither in the other's shadow.
You have gone into the strangest places with me,
places I never thought you'd dare to go,
places I never thought anyone would accompany me.
When I cry, you hold me, and in those rare times
when you cry, I remember the holding and touch you.
Those tears, like roots, have helped us grow out and up,
journeying where I never dreamed. And beneath the tears
blooms love like light tinged with purple joy.
With you, I can be still, and when we do walk,
we're so in step that the movement seems still.
Fast we hold, fast one to the other
greening toward more green.





Susan Herport Methvin

Last letter to us all

I found this letter on her desk this week. It's funny, sad, and full of love. I know she wanted to respond to everyone who wrote her. The (??) in places is where I could not read her writing.

Hello my friends and family -
I love and respect you all a great deal and I apologize for this and its lack of intimacy. I've receive many many heartfelt notes and emails that I want to answer but it has become impossible to take them on one at a time. Here is the news...
Fusions in my liver have fired up, apparently pissed off and bored with the power of chemo. A few dots have flown up to my lungs. Congestive heart failure has settled in and my low breating rate has wiped out the possibility of a new cancer drug.
And to top it off osteo necrosis (death) of the jaw causing me to lose teth at the bse of the root and bone fragments above the jaw line. (Kudos to Fosamax.)
I may be able to climb up and over this mess. I am trying to learn to live in the mystery.
On the porch my pup of a mini poodle and I have napped, looked at birds, I've counted Kudzu leaves. Tempus fugits! (??) Tampus flarc! (??) Jacques eats chairs, Mandy feeds Leo and Daid revisits (?) my carbon copy lung scan. Email is difficult to read. Telephone calls unable to breath. Please send me a card or a letter. In awhile you will hear if I croak or feel better.

Susan

Poem read by Amy at Susan's service

When I read this poem, the words pulled this incredible joy from me and when I read the last stanza my voice portrayed the ecstasy I felt reading her words.

SAILING LAKE LOGAN MARTIN


Blue heron, ducks, gulls over
water. On the dock, a chocolate Lab.
We motor out, rely on wind

as the sail expands.
Carried faster and faster,
I smell the cutting waves.

The boat leans; your back's
toward the water's smooth surface,
a wall behind you.

Sunlight silvers the lake
while a catfish line tugs
at a red and yellow buoy.

Look, I'm not afraid,
I'm laughing here, a speck
between lake and sky.

Love That Man Jesus

Read by Provie Musso at Susan's Memorial service on Sat. 3/10/2007

Susan Methvin


LOVE THAT MAN JESUS


Jesus and I in a blue jeep. His hair
strokes the wind. Long hair. White teeth.
Sex incarnate. Let's say we're speeding
down a hill in Pittsburgh, PA. Sandal to the floor,
we're flying and Jesus laughs. It's all
right, Girl, you're with me.

The neighbors think he's on drugs. My husband
is at Joe Bravo's filing for divorce. But Jesus
how can I say no when you're so gentle?
Jesus in my living room smoking
a cheroot. Jesus in blue denim stands at my stove
stirring lentil soup. Jesus in my bedroom
healing hands upon my sides.

Jesus calling from a phone booth in Cleveland,
Tennessee. He's transubstantiated live
at The Holy Angels Church. He says, Girl,
you should have seen their faces when I did
the two step down those marble stairs and sang
how love beats incense and claret wine.

Poem read at first ashes ceremony at Mt. Cheaha

Sunday afternoon I went with Mandy, David, James, Sondra, Ellie, Lexie, Leo, Sam and Ken to Cheaha were we spread some of her ashes. This is the poem I read:


Cheaha Mountain

For David


There. The hawk is framed for one second
in the open sun roof, and then, the car speeding,
it's lost beyond and into the mists
above the green mountain. We're climbing
at the start of Winter, outback music
pulsing through the car's speakers. Long hair
frames your face, my son, and soon,
at the top, we park. The dog jumps from the car
and while I walk with her, you climb even higher
into an old stone tower where I know you can see
dark clouds rolling through the valley. I turn up
my collar, my bare head cold. I breathe,
think of moments, try to fathom life,
fearing my own drifting. You've brought me here
where cold stone juts out, Bald Rock,
here where green lifts from the cradled town.
The owl hooting in the wooded lot beside my room.
The altar where egret feather settles
between blue stones. Coffee's aroma
drifting from the kitchen where my husband
stirs the last spices into a meal he hopes
will cure me. At home I sit, knees beneath my chin,
and breathe Maranatha. Maranatha,
remember the haunting outback strains,
your head leaning as you turn and point
to another hawk, the way you never judge
my despair, never doubt that I am alive now.
Your hair blowing, your eyes squinting to find the hawk
because you know he's what I need: the lift of wing,
the spread, the turn over the mountain.

Susan Herport Methvin
1-7-97

Obituary of Susan Herport Methvin

METHVIN
Anniston - A Memorial service for Susan H. Methvin, age 60, of Anniston, will be held on Saturday, March 10, 2007 at 2 p.m. at St. Michael's & All Angels Church with Rev. Robert Childers and Rev. Mary Vandergriff officiating. The family will receive friends one hour prior to the service at the church. Mrs. Methvin died peacefully March 7, 2007 at home.
Mrs. Methvin was a member of Grace Episcopal Church and also the American Association of Writers. She was a published poet in various publications including We-Moon, Crab Orchard Review, Art.Rage.US, Duke University, Poetry Northwest, and Negative Capability. She also co-authored "The Trees are Mended" with George Richards and William Miller. She was a graduate of both St. Francis College, where she was the 1967 Homecoming Queen, and Warren Wilson College. She had recently been an English professor at Jacksonville State University.
Susan is survived by her husband, Andrew Methvin of Anniston; daughter, Amanda H. Palmer and her husband, James, of Atlanta; son, David F.
Herport, of Daphne; grandsons, Sam Herport and Leo Palmer; nieces, Amy Evans and Ellie Hubbard; and caregiver, Minnie Nolan of Anniston.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests memorials be made to the American Cancer Society, P.O. Box 22718, Oklahoma City, OK 73123 (www.cancer.org); Grace Episcopal Church, P.O. Box 1791, Anniston, AL 36202; the Warren Wilson College Scholarship Fund, P.O. Box 9000, Asheville, NC 28815; or to the Jacksonville State University Foundation, 700 Pelham Road North, Jacksonville, AL 36265. Online condolences may be made to the family at www.klbrownmemorychapel.com.
Arrangements by: K.L. Brown Memory Chapel, 620 Golden Springs Road, Anniston, AL 36206; (256)231-2334.