Years ago, when my mother passed away, I restored a dilapidated outbuilding and painted a sign for it that read: The Mary Jane Merritt School For Girls. I think my mother, Mary Jane Merritt Hanna, might have wondered at this, but since I’m the oldest of her beloved Honey Girls, she would have approved.

She might feel the same way about this book: flattered, curious, ambivalent.

Poetry was all over the place in that drafty old house on Main Street with its floral wallpaper, iced-over January windows, steam of Sunday afternoon pot roast. It was in our village too with the creek running through it and the train’s dark whistle out on those empty edges. I grew up with poetry but only knew it in a well-worn book of fairy tales.

Words have always been my way of knowing—writing—my way of giving voice. These poems cover many years, many loves, many stumbled-upon moments of grace. They are all together in this book. For better or for worse, they are here.

I began to understand that clothes are poetry when I was 9 or 10, and Aunt Glady took me to Canandaigua, NY to buy the petticoat I so fiercely wanted. I knew by the intensity of my desire for this frothy thing that something beyond simple wanting was at work.

Dreaming of petticoats, I doodled them over and over on the brown-bag covers of textbooks and envisioned myself as the radiantly beautiful, captivating girl I was really meant to be…in spite of obvious evidence to the contrary.

It was January. Snow was piled high outside the old store with its oiled wood floor and high tin ceiling. The petticoats were hung along the wall on a pipe rack like ballerinas at the barre. I choose the one I wanted, the one of my dreams, and Aunt Glady smiled and paid for it.

Magic was at work here. When my sister and I banked twenty-five cents a week (money from our grandmother), and even five cents for a bottle of chocolate milk was not to be taken lightly, and Aunt Glady worked on the assembly line at the doorbell factory and brown-bagged it every day, the advent of the petticoat into my life was about as likely as Chucky, the neighbors’ dog, growing a fourth leg to replace the one he lost under a car.

I wore that petticoat out. First the elastic went on the waist and then the various tiers began tearing away and threads drifted from the hem. But wearing it under my skirts, seeing them bloom like plaid roses and hearing the dry-maple-leaf rustle when I walked to school, I knew the ordinary day was anything but, and I knew that with the flouncing power of the petticoat, I was anything but shy, plain, invisible.

Now so many years later with a closet full of petticoats, I try to remember that each day is worthy of its own special sartorial presentation. Today might be the black, torn net with faded velvet flower, tomorrow…layers of violet tulle. And even on a petticoat-less day, there is poetry in Doc Martens and a silk skirt tied up with organdy ribbons.

Every day warrants its poem; the petticoat concurs and is only too happy to oblige.

I Remember (Je me souviens)

Behind the clock face
is Paris. Beyond the ticking
away of ordinary moments
is a lamp-lit cafe with rain streaking
its windows, poetry spattering its walls.

Angels soaked in gray,
dilly and dally, linger in damp,
seedy corners, grin at gargoyles,
call each other by name: Francois,
Geraldine, Celeste, Guillaume.

Here at home, winter sets in. Beds unmade.
Floors unswept. Hearts undone. Party dresses
languish in closets. French spoken only
in memory when you je t’aime’d me
in clouds of sleep.

The angels extend their cold fingers
across oceans and fields, through snow
and wind to my outstretched, mittened
hands. I order an au lait at Starbucks, listen
to the cacophony of clatter and chatter,

feel the steam of hot milk on my face,
feel the bones of the angels’ fingers
in mine, know that Paris is just beyond
this moment, just beyond this unwashed
window raining tears.

Palma, NYC

It’s a chilly January night in New York with a snow/ice storm hovering around the edge of the weekend. We have come to the city for a stimulant to revive our spirits lulled and dulled with routine and familiar landscape. New York always does the trick, even in winter when almost everyone is wearing black puffs and the sky is slate gray and asphalt-scented air drifts up from subway grates.

In the library, we happened upon the work of Anna Atkins, who back in Victorian England was the first to print each page of her book: Photographs of British Algae, in cyanotype, a camera-less photographic process that became known as the blueprint. Atkins quietly brought focus and passion to the study of botany, presenting her findings with sensitive artistry and unwavering persistence. And it seems that only recently, many years after her death, is she recognized as a pioneer.

I’m guessing that being known didn’t mean much to her. The joy was in the work, in the process of effort and discovery, in the creation of something beautiful and worthy.

Which brings me to Palma, a restaurant on quirky little Cornelia Street. We didn’t meet Palma herself, the owner of this dreamy place, but like Anna Atkins, the joy she takes in her creation is palpable. Coming in from the chill and darkness, we stumble into a beautiful room with bouquets of roses, carnations, Queen Anne’s lace, and full-throated daisies in shades of peach and coral clustered in old bottles and vases of glass and tin.

The decor is a mix of campestral Italy and abandoned factory with battered metal chairs, thick oak tables, rustic baskets, and flickering votives everywhere. Plates are heavy and white, like the napkins, and the menu is folded into a vintage valentine. We order a homemade pasta flavored with truffles and mushrooms and infused with an earthy goodness that warms body and soul.

Palma has fashioned a world here: a sustaining mix of color, texture, fragrance, taste, and light. I think of Gilbran’s quote: “Work is love made visible.” It can come from anyone and did on this trip: the considerate plumber who worked for the hotel and fixed the leaky faucet; the cab driver from Queens who laughed and told stories in a thick accent of his three daughters; the cheerful porter who greeted everyone with a smile and a little bottle of water at the revolving door of the hotel.

There is a typewritten message inside Palma’s menu that reads: “May the love you give to the universe make this world a more beautiful place.” A rose in a bottle. A smile at the door. A bowl of scrumptious pasta. We opened our eyes.

Beyond the Shade

In early winter with its dreariness and still, cloudy days, it can seem as if everything is frozen in sleep, buried in the hard-packed earth. I like this season, especially the days when there is only quiet sans wind, snow, sun, and rain. There is a nothingness, a lack of drama and color and activity that is deeply soothing. A gray flannel blanket of afternoons, if you will.

This apparent nothingness is an invitation to settle down and observe, realizing there are levels and layers to things that go unnoticed during a hustle-bustle day of appointments, to-do lists, urgencies. On the run, the scent of orange perfuming my fingers from the peeled clementine, the breathing of the furnace, the petal falling from the geranium in the bedroom window…all remain outside of awareness…and unobserved are unexperienced.

I have started to meditate, nothing fancy, nothing much to crow about really. Just five to ten minutes after coffee and morning reading. I close my eyes and breathe and breathe and then the tumult begins: images, concerns, wishes, memories, ideas…one piling upon the other like raked leaves, and then I breathe again and breathe again and something else immediately surfaces. It goes on like this, the gentle back-to-the breath patience after a flurry of thoughts.

The practice is teaching kindness. It is teaching detachment. It is teaching the wonder of quiet and how mostly, my being conspires against it. Why, I wonder? What is this restlessness, this resistance to simply sitting still and listening? Why is busy linked with productive? A full calendar with worth? A busy brain with intelligence?

The quiet takes me outside of myself for a few blessed moments and enter the insides of things that often make their way to a poem: the cold blue coffee cup in my hand; dust settling on the creased photo of my mother, father, aunties long gone; the smell of butter melting in the baking scones.

My eyes look around the little back room. I am struck by the pattern of bare dogwood branches beyond the brown shade and take a picture. Only when I look at the photo, do I see the face looking in at me. One more bit of wonder that would have gone unnoticed if quiet hadn’t intervened.

Porch Sweet Porch

It is summer in earnest. Past solstice, morning light still filters through the curtains at five, and afternoons linger before folding into evening. I find myself moving slower too; effort is an atonal note in a long stretch of leisurely melody.

Summer seems the season closest to childhood and its rhythms, following the light wherever it took us: to the shade beneath a maple tree, to hot gravel roads under our bike tires, to the stony shores of a sparkling lake, to twilight back yards and games of hide & seek with fireflies caught in our hair.

In July or August, I am fortunate to find my way home to home, the little town in western New York where memories surface like fish in a pond. I am also fortunate to have three splendid sisters, one of whom is the creator of this porch. Aside from the fact that she can see the quirky comeliness in all sorts of rag-tag things, she is an artist with an eye for placement, contrast, juxtaposition. To sit on one of her porches (she has two, plus a patio) is to know the true sweetness and comfort of summer and home.

In early morning when the air is fragrant with grass and the warblers are fluttering by, we sit on the porch and hold big cups of strong creamy coffee and talk about our plans for the day, our dreams for our lives. We process, dissemble, reassemble, compare and contrast, examine and put away. Our talk is a comfort and an essential balm, settling each of us in the moment. And all the while, morning circles round the porch, and the sun warms our bare arms and toes.

This July, that sun was bold and merciless, bending the fragile dill in half, shriveling the basil, baking the roses. Memories surfaced again: the waves of relentless heat that rose from the corn and wheat fields like an oven door left open by mistake; the humidity that stuck to the skin, a thin layer of glue; the still, breathless nights when we slept at the foot of our twin beds near the single window and woke confused, bewildered by tangled dreams.

The beautiful rooms of my sister and brother-in-law’s house are cooled by air conditioning, but the porch stays connected to summer and its moods. It seems to me that all houses should have porches open to street, sidewalk, road, and weather. The porch keeps us aware of the billowing clouds threatening rain, aware of the lighting up and cooling down of the day, aware of each other. I have a friend who recently moved to a smaller home that has no front porch, only a small back patio. She says it’s hard to meet people when your orientation doesn’t include them.

Porches, with their eye to all the goings-on, can be quiet or convivial, screened or unscreened, grand or minuscule. To lean back in an old rocking chair and look out at summer in bloom, to smell the rain and the grateful earth, to hear the roses sigh at twilight, the jubilant cries of children on bikes is to have the best seat in the house.

Aiken-Rhett House

During the second tumultuous nor’easter, I was fortunate to escape toppling trees, power outages, and heavy snow that tested the mettle of all New Englanders. Charleston, South Carolina beckoned, and I gratefully followed. Far from the rigors of winter, I walked miles on the cobblestones and uneven sidewalks of a city steeped in history, permeated with warmth and charm.

The architecture, shaded gardens, watery smells off the Battery were memorable, delightful even to my senses numbed by wind and cold. But it wasn’t until I stepped over the stained marble threshold of the Aiken-Rhett house that Charleston really came alive.

The house, built in 1820 on Elizabeth Street by Governor William Aiken, Jr., has remained untouched by restorers in a “preserved as found” approach to its conservation. The whole estate with its kitchens, stables, carriage house, privy, and small, bare rooms for slaves has managed to survive mostly intact, save for the effects of time, for almost 200 years.

The Aiken family managed to live in and hang on to this mansion for 142 of those years, through the Civil War that destroyed an economy depending on slave labor, the upheaval of Reconstruction, and years aplenty after that. Maybe that continuous ownership is part of the reason this house, where little has been disturbed, is a gathering place for spirits and memories, a wellspring for the imagination. The other historical houses in the city that have been painstakingly restored to their original grandeur are, to me, elegant, but strangely lacking in soul and story.

Not so this magical place, where voices thick with honeyed accents resound off the cracked, peeling walls. Floors creak. Tattered chairs wait in dark corners. Dust motes whirl in the soft afternoon light. In this ballroom, I hear the rustle of taffeta, of laughter melodious as crystal prisms, of music saturated with hope and longing. Each of the many high-ceilinged rooms is a complete stage, always waiting for the play to take up where it left off.

All I wanted to do was pull up a wobbly chair, sit for hours, listen. And after that, walk slowly through the house at least three times, in different light, on different days and try to capture a remnant of its mystery and the emotions that mystery evokes. A poem might do that, but I find I am at a loss for words to describe the evanescent feelings of this house with its eloquent patina left by the lives lived in these once rich rooms and the still poor ones out back.

Lives lived. Real lives. Not distanced by centuries of history but with the intense immediacy of days lived, days gone. On every worn floorboard of this amazing house, real footsteps are heard. Just listen.

Plain as Oatmeal

I could live in a building like this: square and upright, plain as oatmeal, root vegetables, black dresses, and the month of March. A building that speaks in simple, declarative sentences and looks you straight in the eye. An honest building that hides very little, except for a ghost or two and perhaps a wee brown mouse.

If I lived in such a building, I would furnish it with threadbare rugs and chairs with a bit of stuffing showing. Old, weathered doors of pale greens and grays would adorn the bare walls and on top of the doors, ancestral portraits or tattered dresses pinned with poems. It would be rumored that Ravinia, a crown princess of the ancient Corvidae family, occasionally drops handwritten poems and crinkled love notes down the drafty chimney.

The kitchen would be full of cast iron frying pans, heavy, white plates and platters crisscrossed with blue veins, cracker tins, and mixing bowls from long-ago Aunties. Atop the pine table, rescued from a handyman’s cellar, would be seasonal bouquets of ferns, daffodils, brooding roses, evergreens, and fallen sticks from the last windstorm.

Of course, there would be a clawfoot tub upstairs and iron beds and dressers redolent with sunbaked sheets and scattered droppings of lavender buds and rosemary sprigs. Unadorned windows under sloping ceilings let in the sun and stars. Dreams in this building would be only a little scary, mostly entertaining, and occasionally prescient.

I would invite all my odd friends to four o’clock tea served in delicate porcelain cups. We would pull the slightly distressed chairs up to the fire and draw a word out of a robin’s nest for further discussion. Words like sesquipedalian, propinquity, lacustrine, apologia, plangent, irenic. If you didn’t know the meaning, you could invent one that made sense to you, and we would run with it all the same.

But sooner or later, we would put our heads together and think of one small thing we could do tomorrow to show our love for this world: pick up crushed nip bottles, adopt a kitten, pray for peace, compliment the check-out girl, write a letter to the editor when something needs saying, let someone speak and listen when we will never agree, smile and make space for the car ahead of us to merge, help out at the library book sale.

Living in such a building would encourage one of the goals of the original Odd Fellows themselves: “to relieve the darkness of despair.” I look around my little house and think it’s quirky enough to begin the practical work of goodness. But this building, this Odd Fellows Hall, will forever hold my heart, inspire me to be odd in earnest.

Workroom Corner

January is the month of inner comfort. I listen closely to the quiet inside my house, inside me, as outside, the cold descends and winds gust and sometimes snow falls. Silence prevails as my house holds its breath between the furnace fan’s periodic whooshing. I hear nothing but the white noise in my deaf ear, which is akin to the sound you hear holding a conch shell to your ear.

Seeking inner comfort, I drift around my house and notice the places and things that please me: the snug Wyeth room with its warm stove, the view from the upstairs bathroom window in very early morning, the quirky Victorian chair by the fireplace, and this particular corner of my workroom that exhibits the controlled chaos I find reassuring. There is order to be sure but taken with a decided grain of salt.

It’s clear to me that certain things prefer the company of each other. Old books love to linger collectively with other old books. Textures of chipped paint, twigs, string, metal and muslin are family. Colors muted into charcoal, sepia, rust, damask, ledger green and violet recite poems in perfect rhyme. January light filters through two layers of curtains: one lace, one organdy, and the corner seems to breathe a contented happiness.

Contentment is something quite delicious and rare in our madcap, consumer culture. It implies enoughness, an awareness and appreciation of completeness in this moment, the opposite of restlessness, hunger, frustration, emptiness, expectancy. Contentment comes to me on a walk at dusk when January trees are black against a gray sky. Or sitting at a friend’s table in a warm kitchen, thoughtful words flowing back and forth between us. Or lying in bed on a Sunday morning watching pale winter light seep through the faded curtain.

When I was young, I used to be suspicious of contentment, believing it was more the province of cows and well-fed cats than intelligent, curious human beings. But I had mistaken it for lethargy and dullness, when it is, in fact, a feeling that wakes me up to the world with its beauty and wonder, its diverse enchantments.

It is contentment and its inner comfort that I feel these long winter days when my town’s population is cut in half, and I can walk down the middle of Main Street in twilight and breathe in the cold air that feels like breathing stars. It’s a happiness beyond happy. A gratitude beyond thank you. Richer than riches, this January contentment, deeper than silence. Peace beyond measure.

Grace Church. Manhattan.

As I write this, my little Cape Cod village is experiencing its first snow, and even after all these years, I marvel at the way it transforms the familiar, quickens the senses, jolts me awake. A brown, bare world turns itself inside out, and all I can do is stare.

This past weekend, I had occasion to visit Manhattan to celebrate my sister’s birthday. New York is at its most wondrous in December, its most generous. Windows at Bergdorf Goodman, windows at Sak’s, windows at Macy’s are bursts of splendor and imagination. Christmas trees sparkle with a fairy-tale radiance. The air is slightly acrid with roasted chestnuts mounded in foil-covered bowls on vendors’ carts. And everywhere, there are throngs of people inching along the sidewalks, jamming subway cars, clustering in front of those spectacular windows.

In this city, I am often overwhelmed to the point of shut-down. Sometimes all I can do is keep moving, my knee aching, my senses blurred with the enormity of it all, and the quantum leap I have taken from my quiet life in a town that boards itself up for a long winter’s nap, where the December silence is as deep as the ocean that surrounds it.

New York is like a police siren, electric as a hot wire twisting down a Main Street bereft of lights. I look for places of refuge in the midst of the cacophony: the third floor of the New York Public Library, the second floor of ABC Carpet & Home, the way-back stacks at the Strand bookshop. Places to reclaim my senses after constant assault, so that I can surge again into the mad carnival and let its over-the-top-ness make me bigger, stronger, more alive.

All day Saturday, the first snow drifted down on New York, adding another layer of enchantment. Walking up lower Broadway after dinner in a charming little Italian restaurant, I saw this church (appropriately named “Grace Church”) through the falling snow. There are moments that bring us up short, moments when the world turns itself inside out, moments where there is nothing but the moment. Sometimes it happens when I’m looking at a painting or into the eyes of someone I love or hearing a poem or listening to the wind in the dried oak leaves, sometimes just the smell of new snow will do it.

Grace Church, with its mystery and grandeur, its tangle of haunted forest, snow curving around the walkway to the gothic door took me to a place beyond even New York, to a place where there is only rejoicing and awe, wonder and magic, complete, sacred stillness. Grace can do that, dig itself deep, make its way right down to the soul. Turn us inside out.