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