IN MY STUDIO

I’m writing in a studio I rent at the Loft Literary Center today.  There are 7 studios, and you have to be careful to remember which door is yours when you walk down the two flights of stairs (Cheetos and Bugles for 85 cents in the vending machines in the basement).  You don’t want to walk in on someone else’s creative cave.

The studios are constructed from old doors, scavenged from buildings. I assume many of these buildings are “no longer with us”, as the euphemism goes.  Like the Metrodome sports arena, which I’ve had the honor of watching get knocked down right outside this window, in this studio.

The doors have little drawings or paintings on them, mostly of a biologic nature.  There is the “Twig” door, the “Flower” door, the “Bird” door and my current favorite, the “Bug” door.

When I go stretch my legs, I repeat to my brain over and over: the bug door, the bug door, so that when I return, I return by way of the insects, to my writing hive.

I like to write in the bugs.  The ones that pollinate us, and the ones that, well, bug us.  We think that pollinators just pollinate flowers (as if that is a minor undertaking), but they actually pollinate us as well.  They pollinate our eyes with wonder, our ears with swift music, our taste buds and stomachs with delight.  Without our friends the pollinators—hummingbirds, bees, butterflies, flies, moths, even bats—we wouldn’t get to eat tomatoes, almonds, oranges, peppers, onions, broccoli, beans, strawberries, avocados, mangos and a host of other nutritious, scrumptious fellow creatures.

And yet, we’re killing the pollinators.  Bees are dying.  The Monarch butterfly population is way, way down. A lot of that is caused by us.  Destruction of habitat, destruction of the plants that our friends the pollinators need to eat in order to help us to eat. 

Nionicotinoid herbicides that can damage bee colonies.  Genetically modified crops that withstand herbicides, so farmers can broadcast Round Up and other herbicides—it won’t kill the corn or soybeans, but it will kill all the milkweed, the monarch butterflies only food source.

Are we so afraid of weeds that we have to kill the pollinators that feed us?

I’m in the bug studio, right above where the recycling dumpster is now being lifted up by the giant blue bug called a garbage truck. The truck backs out slowly, and its metallic chirping assails my ear, as the rain begins to fall, as the rain turns to snow, as Minnesota turns reluctantly to spring. 

It reminds me that the beauty of language is that words, poems, stories, visions can be recycled. 

Today is my 61st birthday.  There are more and more old doors in my hinge-filled body. And more and more bugs.  I’ve lost some hearing—at high frequencies and low volume (in some gatherings, that’s a blessings). I’m looking at a hip replacement soon.  If I write a long time today, my carpal tunnel will flare up more fiercely.

But this is more wisdom in me, I trust.  And more comedy!

This is a poem I wrote a long time ago—in my twenties, no less.  It doesn’t bear directly on the subject of pollinators, but there is an old priest in it.

THE MASS

For Thomas Merton

A boy raises a match to twin candles,

Chanting baseball scores behind his prayers.

Bread and wine are ground into the stone,

The water is drawn, knife whetted,

Colors kissed and draped over shoulders.

The priest steps slowly to the altar,

Holding his years like stones coughed up by the sea.

He opens the book, lets the words slap his face,

Turns reddened to us, and weeps history.

It is a moment to say yes to failure.

The candles burn thick with darkness,

The music dances in the flames of a thousand circles.

Now the host is raised up to the beaks of night,

Now the words are shouted from the cross:

“This is my Body!” “This is my Blood!”

Walk now to the River, with hands open to receive the promise.

Like a tooth picked off a playground after a fight,

You put it in your pocket, wish on it,

Watch it grow into some terrible friend,

Some new and utterly lonely beast.

 Be beauty.  Be justice.  Be a bug.

Patrick