Braided Conversation

Sometimes a cake, well risen, picture perfect, delectable. Other times a cake half-baked, unrisen, slumped and gooey. And then there are the days, the todays, when the cake isn’t baked at all, when the ingredients remain unmeasured, unsifted, and unblended. Arrested development. Ready. For. Action. Undaunted? Dive in! (If you’re already wary, you may find this baker’s bench of gathered but disorganized material yearning toward insight irrelevant. No hard feelings. After all, it’s Friday after a holiday!) What follows are notes on and around the idea of braided conversation. Please excuse the mess.

What sense to make of multiple threads, narratives, poetry through-lines woven, interwoven, occasionally unwoven? I often — too often, perhaps — refer to braided poetry, narrative, etc. But is it really braiding? Or collage? Braided Conversation? Or conversation collage?

By way of navigational cairn, let’s turn to Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison’s Braided Creek: a conversation in poetry.

While Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison were an unlikely pair to become friends, they shared an intimate correspondence of handwritten letters… and their friendship deepened through the exchange of brief poems… (Source: Copper Canyon Press)

Epistolary poetry between friends, the provenance of individual poems blurry, braided into a shared whole.

When asked why none of the poems have attributions, one of the co-authors replied, “This book is an assertion in favor of poetry and against credentials.” (Source: Copper Canyon Press)

The melding matters more than authorship, say the authors. A braided conversation — plaited poetry — is more valuable than the sum of its parts

“These poems are tiny delicious American haiku affectionately exchanged between two friends… This slim volume acts as a palate-cleanser, a spirit-booster, a little rocket-ship of wonders.” — Naomi Shihab Nye

A little rocket-ship of wonders to be sure!

I’ve culled and shuffled a few of my favorites inspired in no small part by their uncanny relevance — even their verisimilitude — to my Rosslyn experience and my Rosslyn Redux quest, especially when re-sequenced.

Oh what dew
these mortals be.
Dawn to dark.
One long breath. — Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison (Source: Braided Creek: a conversation in poetry)

[N.B. Please note that this citation is for the next twelve poems/excerpts as well.]

Is this poem a pebble,
or a raindrop coated with dust?

—//—

I heard the lake cheeping
under the ice, too weak
to break through the shell.

—//—

Surely someone will help
the mourning mourning dove,
but who, but who?

—//—

At the tip of memory's
great funnel cloud
is the nib of a pen.

—//—

The birds,
confused by rain clouds,
think it's evening.

—//—

What is it the wind has lost
that she keeps looking for
under each leaf?

—//—

The butterfly
jots a note on the wind
to remind itself of something.

—//—

In a pasture, wild turkeys,
flip cow pies, looking for bugs. 

—//—

Fresh snow, standing deep
on the phone wire. If you call me,
speak softly.

—//—

A house will turn itself
to catch a little moonlight
on a bed post.

—//—

A welcome mat of moonlight
on the floor. Wipe your feet
before getting into bed.

—//—

Bullfrog groans.
He is the wooden floor
under the cold feet of the night.

A conversation braided out of petite poems. Perfection.

I wonder if a braid of braiding references in blog posts might render rudiments of rhyme, a subtle singing underneath. Let’s give it a go.

[I contemplate] the challenge(s) of bridging a meandering waterway, a braided brook, braiding and unbraiding season-to-season, even rainstorm-to-rainstorm… “multi-threaded channels”… perennially protean and elusive…

Bridges offer practical and durable solutions to real problems… And yet, as so often, these problems and solutions drift into metaphor. I consider the foolhardy fun of bridging — attempting to bridge, really — the threaded channels of a restless creek, ill contempt with her bed, curious and exploratory, ever ready to reroute, to divide, and to overrun her banks.  (Source: Bridging a Braided Brook)

—//—

The ferry’s visual and audible “metronome” braided a subtle but hypnotic soundtrack into our visits. (Source: Ferry Rhythm)

—//—

The parlor light at sunrise… blurs boundaries. Artwork and sitting room, creative conjuring and cozy coffee-sipping home, illusion and bricks and mortar abode are braided into an intimate and familiar experience. (Source: Parlor Light & Paul Rossi Painting)

—//—

Today is intimately braided out of yesterday. And that, my friends, demands plenty of patient persistence. (Source: Mending Fencing Complete)

—//—

Please join me next to the fire pit to enjoy a Saturday night sunset. Faces and voices emerge and evanesce in the lyrical light of the flickering flames. We are drawn together, coalescing for a while, braiding together our stories, gazes gathered to a shared mirage above the embers, letting go of the week and the worry. (Source: Sunset from the Fire Pit)

—//—

Another sunset. Another moonrise. So many voices whispering among the cattails and hay bales, singing songs of change, joining together and merging, braiding restlessness into hopefulness. (Source: Prelude to Change: Cattails & Hay Bales)

—//—

I envisioned a toast, thanking everyone individually for their dedication, recalling a few anecdotes, and braiding the collective accomplishments into the broader narrative of our eighteen years as Rosslyn’s stewards. (Source: The Agency of Others)

—//—

So much still coalescing. So much flux and reimagining, brainstorming and experimentation. Each of us drawing on these 18 years, each of us pushing our creative limits, each of us endeavoring to listen as well as we speak, trying to remain nimble and open despite our pet passions and fleeting panaceas. And all the while doubling back to braid and re-braid Rosslyn’s tresses, weaving welcoming words and tailoring photographs into some semblance of an invitation… (Source: Waterfront Retrospective)

—//—

Subtly integrating the constituent parts of this property has been one of the most rewarding challenges across our years at Rosslyn. Braiding buildings and grounds into a cohesive whole, weaving two centuries of diverse homeowner preferences into an aesthetically and functionally cogent and appealing tapestry, these have have been our ambition and our reward. (Source: Arborvitae Planted)

—//— 

Wildflowers
and waist-high hay
weave labyrinthine
tales and tapestries,
thickets thicken, and
blackberry brambles
braid barriers
beautiful but
tangled and thorny.  (Source: Meadow Maintenance)

—//—

meandering
waterway
braiding
unbraiding
within
without
clayplain
forest
autumn
maunder
spring
torrent
spanning
straddling
fluvial
follies
— "Braided Brook" (Source: Bridging a Braided Brook)

—//—

Sunrise sparkles
in damp air
and dewy grass;
butterflies braid 
levity 
and laughter
from last night's
firelight and
lawn games and
stories and
smoky s'mores.

— "Courtyard After Rain" (Source: Courtyard After Rain)

—//—

Settling in and
bearing down but
also not always. 
Sometimes senses
augur unruly,
wistful, wayward,
sometimes unbraiding
springtime’s scent 
of uncertainty
twinged with scintillas
of second thoughts. 
Am I sure, unsure?
(Source: Second Thoughts - Rosslyn Redux)

—//—

Can carpentry conjoin
what nature pulls apart,
what time disintegrates,
what poetry pretends
to braid back together
as if rotten railings,
spindled balusters, and
hustle-bustle bruised posts
are more like memories
and locks of sun bronzed hair?
Can carpenters’ wonder,
troubleshooting, plotting,
cutting, shaping, fitting,
precision joinery,
and perseverance braid
all the parts and pieces 
back together again?
— "Lakeside Lapping" (Source: Lakeside Staircase: Integration & Cohesion)

Parts. Pieces. Notes and jots. Coalescing. Or not. Braids unbraiding. I’m in need of another navigational cairn…