Category: Living

I went into the hardware store to get a tiny set screw (to keep the GD TP holder from flying off the wall every.time. from the simple force of tearing a square TMI?). I love the hardware store. It smells like birdseed and leather oil and they have classic rock radio on and the dudes that work there are true dudes and will listen to any strange explanation of a problem and try and help you fix it (remember my camo tarp?). It is one of those places that feels unchanged in at least 50 years and I hope that by not just heading over the mountain and going to Lowes that hopefully it can remain unchanged for another 50. Sigh. After the dudes settled on the correct size screw and were ringing me up, I saw, next to the ancient zagnuts and mary janes and nabs by the register they had a stack of 2013 almanac calendars, $1. No brainer impulse buy.The almanac calendar is full of all kinds of brilliant and random information, useful in a glorious but somehow achingly old-fashioned way. Each day tells you when the sun will rise and set, what the moon is up to, whether there’s going to be any significant change in the weather, if you need to watch out for any Leos in your life, and (of course) how good the fishing’s going to be that day. Red days are days of rest, big woodcut white-faced moons are full and bright in the sky, and any extra space dictated by the length of the month is filled in with information in varying degrees of usefulness: upcoming eclipses, birthstones, how much paint it takes to cover a given surface, animal gestation times, how much of different crop seeds you need to cover a given size plot of land, the vagaries of astrological signs, how to clean windows etc. etc. etc… Today, smack in the middle of primrose February is, indeed, cold after Saturday’s blustery rolling-pin-wielding storms and yesterday’s general mellowness, and the fishing is terrible so I’ll stay inside, avoid any battling Geminis that might cross my path otherwise, and wait with watchful eyes as the days get longer. This can be a life where this information still matters, where the moon and stars are not distant and unseeable, but players on a timeless stage, dictating a time to plant, a time to reap, a time to dance, a time to mourn, a time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together. It’s where the almanac hangs by the marvelous stove. So, for general thoughtfulness on this bone-chilled day, Time to plant tears, says the almanac:

Sestina

Elizabeth Bishop

September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.

She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac,
but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
She cuts some bread and says to the child,

It’s time for tea now; but the child
is watching the teakettle’s small hard tears
dance like mad on the hot black stove,
the way the rain must dance on the house.
Tidying up, the old grandmother
hangs up the clever almanac

on its string. Birdlike, the almanac
hovers half open above the child,
hovers above the old grandmother
and her teacup full of dark brown tears.
She shivers and says she thinks the house
feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.

It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.
I know what I know, says the almanac.
With crayons the child draws a rigid house
and a winding pathway. Then the child
puts in a man with buttons like tears
and shows it proudly to the grandmother.

But secretly, while the grandmother
busies herself about the stove,
the little moons fall down like tears
from between the pages of the almanac
into the flower bed the child
has carefully placed in the front of the house.

Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house.