 Plague
by Elizabeth C. Haynes While they die, the wind blows. The birds sing The trees sway The rivers flow The creatures sigh The sky is bluer, the stars are brighter. The waters clear, the air more kind. While they die, more humans sit in shielded bleachers, waiting… And looking on, they finally see what it truly means To live. ------ My first book, Halfway There: Lessons at Midlife, will be published in summer 2020. To be notified when it is available for purchase, sign up for my mailing list. To read more of my poetry, visit my Poetry page.
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 This year for Christmas I asked for An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo, Poet Laureate of the United States. I’m an avid reader and a proud lit. major, but I’ve never asked for a book of poetry in my life.
If I could take you back in time, I’d drop you into a college classroom in the basement of a cold building in Springfield, Missouri. You’d see a 19-year-old version of myself yawning and rolling my eyes as we discussed Yeats or Plath or Frost. I hated poetry. I loathed it. I often skimmed or skipped my poetry reading assignments, and let my thoughts float away during those long-winded discussions. Now let me drop you into my life a year or so later. This time you’d find a 20-year-old version of myself sitting in a poetry writing class. I'd be at a tiny desk in a second-story classroom, with a small window in the corner and a big whiteboard at the front. Shocked that I ended up there? I know. Me too. But my degree plan required me to take one creative writing class and so I chose poetry as the least painful option. I lacked the confidence to write anything longer than that, and I thought perhaps I had enough smarts to write a few lines of verse and get it over with. I didn’t flunk out of the class or fall madly in love with the genre. I also didn’t discover myself as a writer or even come coasting out with a solid B. What I actually did was become stifled for the next 15 years or so, because the professor hated my work so much that he held it up (literally, on an overhead projector) as a model of what NOT to do. Every other week, which is how often we had to turn in a poem for his review. People tell me now that maybe he saw something in my writing. That maybe he was envious or otherwise intimidated, as he’d published a lot of his own work (most of it dark and depressing) and that perhaps I was able to write what he couldn’t. Of course I can’t say if that’s true or not, especially since those poems are stored on floppy drives and are inaccessible without some major effort. But it’s nice to think about it that way on my really bad days. I went on from that class and I never wrote anything until my late twenties outside of some sparse journaling and some tear-filled personal blogging. It wasn’t until I approached my thirties that I began to realize my violent emotional scribbles were actually birthing a writer. And from there I discovered that I’d actually written some poetry along the way. In fact, I’d even written a rhyming poem called "I Don’t Write Poetry." How had this not registered in my brain? I think it’s interesting how sometimes the things we’re most repelled by are actually the things that are truly “ours” once we get past the wall of fear. I started to realize I was a sleepwalking poet only a few years ago. I called myself a sleepwalker because I’d written poetry without seeing it or knowing it was happening, and it wasn’t until I’d flipped through my scribbles a year or five later that I’d noticed patches of words emerging from the page and forming verse. So these days I have a new thought about my college experiences: that maybe I actually took the poetry writing class because it was part of my DNA, not because it was the easiest way through. And maybe I actually ran away from Wordsworth and Keats because I was deeply afraid of my own abilities (or lack thereof). I think as we try to figure out what we’re here to do, we can sometimes find clues in those things that we turn away from or avoid - especially if they keep popping into our lives from around this corner or the other. For me, my "thing" kept resurfacing in my writing without my even being aware of it. Do you have anything like that happening in your life? I’ve also learned that when we claim to hate something, it’s often because we’re afraid of it. We’re afraid of its affect on us or we’re afraid of its latent power. We’re afraid that maybe the “thing” will be our undoing or conversely that the “thing” will be a rocket that launches us onward to success. And then we recoil because of the intensity of what that might be like. Last night I was flipping through a special black notebook that I keep in my nightstand to jot down my creative ideas. It contains some of my most important musings from the last four years, and it turns out that in 2016 I wrote a helluva lot of poetry (that I didn't particularly notice at the time). And you know what? Some of it was crap. But some of it was really good - maybe even profound. The other part of this story is that my first-ever publication credit ended up being a poem that was selected for inclusion in a literary anthology in 2017. I sent just one poetry submission to one publication, and it was selected from the masses. Easy as that, apparently. What was I so afraid of? The lesson in all of this is to invite the "thing" into your life that you find yourself running away from. Invite it in like I invited in An American Sunrise, which arrived wrapped in paper and ribbons on Christmas Day. You may discover what it truly means for your life once you stop and take a hard look. ------ My first book, Halfway There: Lessons at Midlife, will be published in spring 2020. To be notified when it is available for purchase, sign up for my mailing list.  This morning I was taking a walk by the pond near my house, which has historically been my sanctuary to reconnect with nature. As of late it’s been interrupted by the beeps and bangs of construction equipment, and the cracking and grinding of wood, all signifying the destruction of nature to make way for man – who has decided to build things on the other side of the creek. It frustrates me greatly.
Sunday is the only quiet day, so today I was able to walk without the ruckus. To hear the birds singing and the squirrels foraging, and to once again lose myself in my thoughts and pretend that maybe I was somewhere else. I’ve seen hawks for a long time now – for probably the last ten years or so. I’ll spot them soaring in the sky or perching on signs or streetlights, often while driving down a busy road in the middle of the city. What prompts me to look up or to look in a certain direction while driving, I never know. I just know that I see them quite often in a flash of five seconds or less. When I first noticed the regularity of these sightings a few years ago, I thought it odd to encounter so many hawks in such a bulldozed place like Dallas where few bits of habitat (and food) remain. But I didn’t consider anything further than that for a really long time. As those sightings continued and even seemed to increase in frequency, I began to think that maybe there was something more to it than the obvious (meaning, an ongoing coincidence). And this morning’s walk brought me back to a place where I know that coincidences aren’t actually a thing and that nothing at all is random in our lives. I was walking with an unusual quietness in my head. There are days where the thoughts thrash around so much that I rush to get back home. Then there are days where my body aches and I barely make it, and I can’t help but ruminate about how I used to not feel that way. Days like today are the best ones, where I’m strolling leisurely and without much thought at all. It’s a Zen-like state that I so often look for on these walks but that I can only find some of the time, probably because of everything else I’m battling every day. The last stretch of sidewalk leading into the neighborhood is historically the place where my trance breaks if I’ve found it. But today that quiet was lingering a bit, and just before I got to the end, I looked to my right and saw a hawk resting on the ground. Just sitting, motionless, and looking at me as I looked at him. Three joggers had passed that spot about two minutes prior, and a man walking his boxer had just disappeared into the neighborhood a minute before. That means four humans and a dog had all passed that spot without incident. Without seeing. Why did they not see and I did? I stood still on the sidewalk, looking at the hawk and weighing the significance of this latest encounter. When it didn’t take flight, I pulled out my cell phone to take a picture (shown at the top of this post), I guess because I’d seen so many of them lately and here was yet another that was closer than the rest. The hawk continued to stare at me without much fanfare, and then it suddenly took off toward the trees, soaring, gliding. I captured one more picture of its wingspan and then focused my attention on the present – on the hawk that was now perched atop one of the towering trees behind our neighborhood. I gave it one last look, turned away, and kept walking up the sidewalk. I emerged from the greenbelt deep in thought. I’d seen at least three hawks in the past week and it was a pace above my usual. In fact, they’d kept coming and coming the last couple of months and I wanted to know what it all meant. “Do you ever see the hawks when we’re driving?” I’d asked my husband about a week ago, after seeing another one dive toward some grass while we were speeding down the highway. “Hawks? No. Why?” he’d said. “I just see them all the time. I’ve seen them for years and I just saw another one. You really don’t see them?” “Umm, nope. I don’t remember seeing any hawks.” I’ve long thought that the hawks show up for me because they have some sort of message or are reminding me of something I’ve become disconnected with inside myself. I’ve felt this way about cardinals too, but in a different way. The cardinals showed up immediately after I lost both of my beloved kitties, and they showed up again after I sent my book into the world for preorders. I’d been crying on the patio and suddenly they were in my backyard. Lots of them. Cardinals, for me, are a sign that all is well. Hawks, I think, are a sign of a higher calling and a greater purpose. A reminder of a connection to something bigger than myself. I know this is true today, because as I walked home with my thoughts floating around, I came to a sudden conclusion that I so often land on after periods of non-writing that can stretch for months at a time: I’m supposed to be a writer. It was like a voice inside of my head telling me, rather than me thinking it myself. I believe this hawk came to remind me of my calling and that I still have a higher purpose despite being beaten down so badly lately. I believe it also came to breathe fresh life into me, because after having spent the last month or two utterly burned out and devoid of anything to say, I sit here today and write this post. Maybe it’s a good one and maybe it isn’t (it certainly hasn’t been one of my easier ones to write), but I’m at least no longer devoid of words. I at least have something to say and the desire to say it, and the ability to sit down and type something when I’ve spent the last two months in a bit of a stupor. Yes, a hawk is just a bird. It could be a hell of a coincidence and maybe there’s nothing more to it than that. But deep inside, I know that’s not what it is. I know that this planet is held together by forces that we don’t have the capacity to understand because our scientific tools (and brains) only reach so far. And I choose to remain open to the idea that we each have a purpose and that our guidance comes in interesting or unexpected ways. For me? It’s a hawk. It’s a soaring being who floats in and out of my life to remind me to continue to soar myself. To spread my wings and fly with the gift I’ve been given, to rise above adversity, and to achieve my highest potential while I’m on this planet. Thank you, hawk, for continuing to show up. ------ My first book, Halfway There: Lessons at Midlife, will be published in spring 2020. To be notified when it is available for purchase, sign up for my mailing list. |
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