Will Work for Food

Shhh! I can't talk now, I am in the middle of preparing a Surprise (Soo-pree-zah) for a co-worker. Standard to the Sinterklaas celebration we will have a work party tomorrow evening, complete with a visit from the Sint. We have exchanged names and will exchange gifts accordingly tomorrow--in anonymity as all gifts for this holiday come from Sint himself.

I am working diligently to finish up a hand crocheted sjaal (neck scarf) which I have stiched in all the in-between-minutes of my life, which then I will tie around a bottle of wine to present to one of my favorite people on the staff. I must also figure out how best to disguise the box I wrap to make it an appropriate surprise.

Then, there's one more thing, and this is where you, my friends and my readers, come in. Attached to each gift the Sint delivers there is a poem. This poem generally contains some information about the gift itself and about the receiver. Meaning, it is the perfect venue for Sint to talk about/tease/cajole that person. For instance, my darling husband comes to bed in the winter with his socks on which is something I tend to tease him mercilessly about. His gift last night was a framed series of photographs I took one day while he and I were out together. The poem read in part like this:

There once was a boy, name of Don
who slept with his long stockings on!
"In the winter" says he
"I'm as cold as can be--
with the temperature ten below one!"

Back when the sun shone so bright
With Jenn he saw two birds in flight.
She was quick with the lens
and with flash now and then
She captured the moment just right!

I have to admit, after the fun of last night's visit for the children and our guests, I am a little Sint-poem'ed out. So I turn to you, masters of all that rhymes, for your ideas and your assistance. In the comments section, leave me a verse or two, or hey, an entire poem and I will ... what?

Be forever grateful? Uh-huh.

Sing your praises? Absolutely.

Send you chocolate? Yup.

You heard me, assist me with this poem and I will send you a Sint treat via the post. Yes, this is me stooping to bribery to escape five minutes of work. Really, there are no depths to which I will not sink.

Info about the recipient here:

Her name is Marie
She is a teacher
At the ISH
She comes from Nova Scotia
She is new in The Netherlands
She is blonde, tiny and incredibly sweet
She tap dances
She lived in Ireland
She loves her wine
It doesn't take much of that before she is a little loopy
That's what I call her: Little Loopy
She is great with the kids
Especially mine

Go forth now: be creative, rhythmic and rhymey. This is an offer you can't I hope you won't refuse.

15 Lines

Out and about on the World Wide Web, I was looking for something else entirely, when one of the first hits on my search list led me to Embassy of the United States, The Hague, The Netherlands. (Oh, yeah, try saying that five times fast!)
About halfway down the page I spotted this little blurb:

American Poet Mark Strand reads from Dutch-English collection of his works
May 22, 2007.
American poet Mark Strand, Pulitzer Prize winner and former Poet Laureate of the U.S., read his poetry at the residence of U.S. Ambassador Roland E. Arnall.
The recently published Dutch-English book Gedichten Eten (Eating Poetry) contains translations of select poems by Mr. Strand. Dr. Wiljan van den Akker, professor of Dutch Literature, and Ms. Esther Jansma, poet and archeologist, worked in close collaboration with the poet to translate works for the bilingual edition.

And I said out loud, "What are the chances?"

You see, I worked with this writer once. It was about a million years ago when I was a high school student in Salt Lake City, Utah. Mark Strand had received a grant from the Utah Arts Consortium and was an artist in residence at The University of Utah. I took a one-day writing workshop under his tutelage. I can't say that I remember all that much about his writing. Or much about him per se. But I do remember the creative exercise we worked on during the afternoon session.

The assignment was to write a fifteen line poem. Thirteen lines of the poem had to begin with the same phrase or had to reference the same color. So, I did my thing, dashed off a piece fifteen lines worth and declared it finished. It wasn't much. I am not really a poet. It was truly a mish-mash of images, and stuff. Not a thing more profound than that. Truly, nothing special. I am such an esoteric poet, usually my writing has very little meaning to others and I can live with that.
But the telling part was when we passed our poems around to one another and asked for feedback from the other participants. That's when my silly fifteen lines took on all kinds of depth and in its analysis became a completely different piece of writing.
I think the readers were grappling for meaning, but nevertheless they seemed to find imagery and substance in a piece that I thought was fluff.

I still think it was fluff.

But when you are in company of a POET, everyone sees something different.

I suppose.

Anyway, all of this is a long lead for today's post. In honor of this poet whom I met a quarter century ago, and who recently came to my town to promote his own work, now in Dutch, I sat down to grapple with the creative writing assignment once again. In half as many minutes, I have produced again a fifteen-lines poem.

Read into it what you will.

I see young writers hunkered over paper,

pencils flying,

images imbed in imaginations
seeking to be seen.

I see into the future something

which they do not yet see.

I see a secret I cannot tell.

Not now.

That youthful group will

never see what
I see now.

I see somehow I became grown up

and left behind that girl who bites the end of her pen,

and flicks the button on her jacket as she attempts
To see.

I see now that we rush too fast to get through it.

I see that as we run and reach,

we forget to notice,

we forget to relish.

I see the way we seek and

I see the things we miss.

I see it now. Clearly.

I stop. I breathe,

and look

To see.

I see the secret, the mystery.

I see me.

Friday Fifteen