Tanka Toys

I broke out a new notebook today - and had the normal angst - here's a fresh page, a new book and how do I approach it without the predictable writer's hesitation at the sight of a blank page, let alone an entire notebook destined for the detritus of day pages?  I thought I'd try a haiku or tanka, but forgot the rules for tanka, so ended up with an amalgam.  We awoke this morning to new-fallen snow and bitter cold, to wind and yet heated floors, pure magic.

                    Finally, last night
                    the temperature rose so
                    a soft snow could fall.

The thing about a haiku is that you just have to invoke some image of nature, follow the syllabic brick road and tah dah!  Please recognize irony here.  So then I tried the tanka and didn't bother to look up the correct syllabilization a word I just invented.

                    We awoke in a
                     snowland, about us
                     crystalline air, the snow pure,
                     and powder-fine diamonds fall
                     around us in pale
                     December light.

Question of the Day

I'm thinking about atonement and absolution and redemption, and the question is:  can there be redemption without atonement?  I believe you may acquire absolution without atonement, absolution may be freely given.  But redemption is more a question of redeeming oneself, not absolving someone else.  Being Catholic, I can't help but think that absolution might require some semblance of regret or resolution to mend one's ways.  But redemption is different.  Redemption requires action, requires effort rather than intent or merely being sorry, sorry, I'll try to do better.  I'm still thinking about it.

Slouching Toward Bethlehem

Advent - we've already had two full months of Christmas advertising, we've survived Black Friday, we are up to our ears in gift advice (gifting, really??).  Let us consider the following:

"When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is
when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble.  And I suspect we are already there."

         Joan Didion "On Morality'Series of essays published as 'Slouching Toward Bethlehem,' 1968

The Art of the Hunt

It's the first of December, the first Sunday of Advent, the second weekend of shotgun deer season in Northern Illinois.  Hunters took out so many of their brethren with rifles that high-powered weaponry are no longer allowed in the hunt.  We had frost overnight and the corn stubble sparkles in the weak light of early morning.  Intermittent dull pops echo across the river as the sun breaks over the hills.  Four they come:  three men and a boy, shotguns over their shoulders, single file to the red pickup truck parked mid-field.  They have been hunting the bottoms of Plum River.  They are not empty-handed.  The lead hunter carries a bundle of fur, likely a small coyote.  There's no bounty on coyotes, but you can get a few bucks for the pelt.  I love to hear the coyotes yodeling across the fields and hills, and I'm hoping it's not a coyote, but you go out, you gotta bring something home, I suppose.  The farmers hate the coyotes, fearing for their herds, but I find the deer more dangerous, maybe the most dangerous critters out there (only because the damned wild turkeys have not yet turned on us).

Deer lay in wait in the ditches, leap fences to assault vehicles, waiting for their main chance.  It's become a game to them - they are no longer the game themselves.  Last night at dusk a couple of big bucks leapt merrily across my path up by Georgetown Road, then a doe and two fawns stepped daintily out of Wenstrom's driveway, flicking their fine white tails for me to admire up close.  I don't hunt, but I wouldn't mind thinning the herds with a strategy beyond messing up the grill of my car.

We live on Loran Road, a regular deer park in rural Carroll County, but they don't necessarily limit themselves to the countryside.  My friend was driving down the main street in a nearby town when a deer ran out into the street and into her car.  Took nearly a month to fix the damage, since the body shops are so busy with rampant deer damage.  My own story, and I assure you it's true, gave me new perspective on how the deer view their role in the driving drama.  I was walking down to the mailbox and saw a buck standing in the alfalfa field across the road.  I could hear a truck downshifting at Indian Trail, just up the road.  The buck ran full tilt down the field, took a sharp right at the ditch and waited for that truck to come down the hill.  Waited for it.  When the truck came around the bend, the buck leapt out into the road.  I heard him snorting with laughter.  What sport.

They are after us, my friend.  True story.

Rewind

Although we were deluged during the last week with images and remembrances of President Kennedy's assassination, I want to capture a few thoughts, and let it go for another twenty-five years.

I was in our Algebra II class with Mr Shane.  I was a junior in high school, a Catholic, a Democrat (thanks to my paternal Irish grandmother, Mary Ellen Donegan) and a flippant, smart-ass confident kid.  We lived in a Dutch Reformed community and a Catholic president was a big deal.

Our principal, Mr Purlee, personally delivered the news to each classroom.  We were stunned, tears ran down Mr Shane's cheeks, he looked as if he'd been poleaxed.  We were dismissed, the halls echoed with intermittent sobs.  I can still remember going to my locker, getting my coat and walking out the front door in a daze.  Our school was rural, all the bus drivers had been notified and we wended home to weeping parents, to unbelievable newscasts, to shocked broadcasters, to silent suppers with the television in the background.

Fifty years later, I get goosebumps writing about it.  It was awful.  Purely awful.  Fifty years later, I look at the footage and wonder what the hell - I want to look at it one more time and have it come out differently.  As the motorcade turned the corner into Dealey Plaza and into the ages, I am glued to the images, hoping against hope that it won't happen, that somehow he will deliver that speech, that Mrs Kennedy's pink Chanel suit will remain unstained, and that we will never have a conversation about where we were November 22, 1963.

On, Wisconsin

I went to a writers' workshop a weekend ago in Madison sponsored by the U's continuing education department.  Totally impressed with the continuing education program and the willingness of the faculty and staff to support the attendees/students.  And totally impressed with the quality of the writing by the attendees.  Good grief!  Very humbling, I must say.  So again, I confront my misgivings about my writing, my lack of confidence and my procrastination.  But the weekend spurred me to once again pick up the threads of the story, to create a sense of place, to finish the damned thing.  My aim is to get it in the form of a final draft by Spring - say six months or so.  I may have to give myself a real deadline, a date rather than a season - my favorite advice from the workshop:  get your characters in hot water as soon as possible, and keep them there as long as possible.

So, on to the mischief-making!

'Strays' Logline

Jane Burns, a seasonal ranger at New Mexico’s El Mapais National Monument, returns to the Midwest to identify a body presumed to be her sister. The corpse isn’t Marti, but Marti cannot be found.  As Jane searches for her sister, secrets from the past shroud the present and force Jane to re-think her future.

I seem to be writing and re-writing the logline - it's for a novel I've had in my computer for years - not that I want to publish it as much as I'd just like to finish it.  So that's my task:  in the next six to eight months, have a final draft of the book.  The logline was an assignment from my latest writing workshop.  I love workshops, homework, writing exercises, all manner of distraction.  It's time to finish the book.  I'll think of it as homework.

MAC Attack

I recently ran out of my latest experiment in tinted moisturizers - which honestly do not provide the coverage a woman of a certain age requires.  But I persist in trying them, my bathroom cabinet cluttered with trial samples and ancient tubes of war paint, none quite the right shade.  While visiting a friend, we came upon a MAC store.  I love MAC cosmetics.  They look good on me, they carry the right shades and tints and tools.  Why I persist in drifting off into the cosmetic hinterlands just baffles me.  I came home and threw away the blue eyeshadow palette, the odd ancient creme blush (that probably harbored mold), the lipstick in the wrong shade of red, and a riot of nail enamel in colors that my daughter might wear.

The real question here:  if we know what works, why don't we just use it?  We distract ourselves, we experiment, we look for the greener eyeshadow on the new horizon.  I'm an adman's dream - I'll try about anything, and end up going back to MAC.  There should be a lesson in this - some metaphor for my life path.  As soon as I get my face on, I'll think about it.

driftless

she's attending church picnics
and watching
the Hawkeyes
on autumn afternoons,
trolling for a kindred spirit
seeking her new self
and a partner in crime

Driftless
becoming part of a new geography
unbounded by mountain ranges,
undefined by the ribs
of a continent.
Nothing to snag your conscience on
out here
on the high rolling plains
a new start
in the heartland

Play Misty for Me

'Play Misty for Me'

Somewhere inside me,

beneath the Old White Lady,

lives Strong Black Woman.

Don't you be messin' with her.

A poem for my friend, Susan, who has an amazing Jazzercize leader, Misty.  We all want to be Misty, believe me.  Especially us OWLs.

une title

red-tailed hawk riding
the thermals,
tracing the perimeter
of a freshly gleaned field


We saw two fledgling bald eagles in the near cottonwood yesterday - we don't often see them this far from the river.  They travel as a pair; they make the hawks look like sparrows by comparison.  We also spied a couple of rooster pheasants on the edge of the cornfield over the weekend.  They are not common any more in this area, as the fencelines are all down and cover is rare.  All sacrificed to the corn crop.  Don't get me started.

home again, home again, jiggity jog

I grew up thinking I would be a farmwife - that I was well-suited to be out in the country with a flock of laying hens, a bunch of kids, and bread baking in the big kitchen where we always ate our dinner at noon and supper at night and after the dishes, the kids would spread their homework all over the table until bedtime.

I had a run at that life in North Dakota, but early learned that nothing I had to say was as interesting as the ten o'clock weather (not to mention the farm report) and that women were pretty much left in the kitchen, whereas I really liked to operate the farm equipment and be outside.  Sometimes I was allowed to drive the grain truck, and I had a run at disking one of my father-in-law's smaller fields:  I later suspected someone might have been indulging me on that assignment.  Eventually, we left the Dakota plains for the Rocky Mountains and learned that life doesn't turn out the way we imagined.

I'm now back in the midwest watching the sun set behind bluffs and the rolling valley to the west.  We live in the driftless area, where the ancient glacier spared the hills and palisades and left the great river that has tugged at my heart my life-long.  I don't miss the chickens and the kids are grown and gone and homework doesn't clutter the kitchen table.  I toast every sunset and bless the sparing glacier and the red-tailed hawk and the gifts of my life, various and unexpected, and ultimately, leading home.

autumn

autumn comes in patchwork along the palisades and bluffs - the river sluggish and muddy with recent rain.  the lemony-leafed walnuts turn first, then the buff hickories, pale, drab in comparison.  cordovan-colored sumac graces the ditches...now and again bittersweet, but without so many fencerows, the bittersweet is rare.  showy maples blaze orange and crimson, the big oaks are reticent.  they will come along, brown and bronze and stately.  they will lose their leaves last, and late.  some are early touched with yellow and red paintbrushed tops, show-offs.

i have seen oak leaves and maple leaves wider than my palm, falling gracefully to the ground, silhouettes in the blacktop roads.  i tuck them into the old bible, where they lose color before you close the pages, fading between layers of waxed paper - believing a somehow just once they will retain their brilliance.

believing just this once i will capture them, their fleeting scent and vibrant colors will stay...and autumn will be more than an ellipsis between august and november.

Octobertime

hawk on the wing
sketching the perimeter
of a freshly gleaned field

Gray Underpants

In the last week, I heard three quotes worth thinking about.  First, a paraphrase of Maya Angelou saying that when someone tells you who they are, believe them the first time.  Then, Oprah stating that (a) you are responsible for the energy you bring to a relationship - including the relationship you have with yourself -  and (b) you are responsible for the energy you allow into that relationship.  And third, embarrassingly, one from Carrie Bradshaw in a 'Sex in the City' episode:  you are responsible for accessorizing your life.  No matter what you are given, what you have, you are the one who accessorizes it.

Which brings me to the gray underpants.  The other day, I'm rummaging through my underwear drawer and find these gray underpants.  In my defense, they are Victoria Secret and they are bikini cut.  However, they are gray.  Not silver, not a sexy snakeskin pattern like my gray bra, no cute stripes and no pink lace trim.  They are gray.  They are grim.  What was I thinking?  They are not cute.  They are not stylish.  They are not necessary in my life.  But there they are (or were - I threw them out).

Discovering that I own gray underpants gave me pause.  Gray underpants tell you who you are, or maybe who you think you have become.  It's not about size, though lord knows I have climbed the size scale at the VS panty bin.  It's about self-perception and energy and accessorizing.  It's about poetry and the soundtrack of your life; it's about goddesses and crones and wild women.  None of whom would own gray underpants.  Even if they were comfortable.

There are no accidents.  The three quotes were random, but not accidental.  I never watch 'Sex in the City' reruns.  Ever.  But that day, I did.

Just sayin'.  Don't tell anyone you are a gray underpants girl.  Don't allow gray underpants  energy in your cute, sexy panty drawer.   And don't ever accessorize your life with gray underpants.  Ever.

doing the best i can

i'm doing the best i can, dammit.

it's not easy being old
and fat,

not to mention
whatever it was that just
slipped my mind.

you think i wouldn't
rather have a waistline?

you think there's not a reason
i finished that bottle of wine last night
even though i'm not recalling it right now?

i look at the calendar, when i can find it,
and there's another month gone,
another season, another friend

lost to time.

maybe twenty good years,
maybe not.

maybe i should buy a place
in florida, or the carolinas.

maybe take that river trip down
the Mississippi.

or maybe i should just put on a
pot of coffee
and get on with the day.

Ornamental Herbs for Illinois Gardens

I have been attending a Master Gardening Class for an hour a week, on Thursday evenings.  We are a various group:  a couple of typically grumpy men and over-enthusiastic women.  I spent the time writing a tanka version of the evening:

I arrive late, rumpled
from dragging the dog out from
under the wheelwell
where Boris the cat hides and
growls in the afternoon rain

The lessons:

Harvest herbs early
in the day when the dew is
sparkling in the sun,
when the dew is sweet and pure
the sun low in the new day.

Dry the herbs gently.
Please handle them tenderly
lest they lose their essences.
They will delight your senses -
you will dance in your kitchen.

Beware invasive herbs!
They overstep their bounds in fits
of enthusiasm,
they are ebullient nuisances.
You cannot eradicate them.

Herbs are annuals,
perennials, or bi-annuals.
They masquerade in
purples and deep lush greens;
they charm you into excess.

They are sweet woodruff,
purple basil, golden sage
spicy nasturtiums.
You'll not rue the thyme taken
to cultivate savory friends.

Next time:

Next week will be wildflowers
featuring a slideshow of
blooms and Indian
lore; a compendium of
sorrow:  tales of blooming tears.

Imbalance

There's no accounting
for our feelings, as we gather
in memorium:  our once friend
and sometimes confidante,
whom we held close:

the credit of our trust against the debit
of your secrets

we so often looked into your guileless eyes
never suspecting betrayal,
defending you and trusting
the balance sheet
as we saw it then

mea culpa

to trust a friend
was a gift we accepted
with open hearts and gratitude
for what you gave, perhaps not as freely
as we thought

does it matter anymore?

The harsh winter light reveals only
the ledger,
your answers in the silence
of the grave.

Ladies of Autumn

work in progress -

I'm thinking about autumnal ladies in jewel-toned blouses and chunky gold and silver jewelry, expansive in their histories, steeped in grandchildren and bridge, ladies of a certain age who know who they are and where they have been; autumnal ladies with calendars full of appointments and the past:  past engagements,  passed times; ladies who look upon life in a softer light, whose sadness is carefully folded away, that season has passed, gentle women.

in lieu of...

since i'm not coming up with a poem a day - i have two in the works:  one about the spring runoff and another about crows eating hamburger off a garage roof- i found a little something i particularly like.  i also particularly enjoy the horrendous punctuation and syntax of the former sentence, but i digress.

'Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those I love, i can:  all of them make me laugh.'

WH Auden, 'Notes ont he Comic'

Ron Rash

I listened to an NPR interview with native North Carolinian Ron Rash, author of a short story collection entitled "Nothing Gold Can Stay," which I have not read.  I haven't read anything else of his, either - but was quite impressed with the interview.

A few observations on storytelling:

1.  Find the universal in the particular (answering a question on why he stays in NC).  I believe he cited Eudora Welty here ( a good researcher would confirm that).  The best regional writers know this:  imagine William Faulkner in the San Fernando Valley, or the Columbia Gorge.  No.

2.  If you don't get the small things right, they won't believe the big lies.

3.  Your landscape is your destiny.  His example was "The Great Gatsby."  To paraphrase, 'no one but a Midwesterner could have written that book.'

turkeys and crows

a lumbering hen
turkey chased the laughing crow
through the cornfield

***

the turkeys meander
through the fields in an icy rain
not a crow in sight

***

crows grip the high boughs
of winter sycamores, bare
limbed

an eagle soars
in the frail February light

***

Discovery of the Month

Ron Rash - 'Nothing Gold Can Stay'

catch his interview on NPR - i'm planning to get hold of this book - and will post later on my most perfect delight with it

hold on to love

written at a time when i frankly wanted to run the other way - but didn't - haven't - yet

not finished (the poem) and here february is done and i have not written much, so a poor ending to a month i won't mind seeing in my rear-view mirror.

hold on to love
even when it hurts,
when it's messy

hold onto love
when it doesnt work
when it's not enough

even when it's
 not
enough

hold on

it's

what we live
for

what happened to...

February?  what happened to a post a day?  a poem every now and then?  an observation?  what the hell?

A man's about as happy....

'I hope you are happy,' he wrote, and I had to think about that.  Mostly, I am.  Happy.  But then, I'm a happy person, overall.  So how do I reply, or measure such a thing?  Such a thing that just 'is.'  Mostly, I am happy.  The pursuit of which is an inalienable right, after all.  Maybe it's the pursuit that engages us: the hunt for happy.  I don't think about it much.  It was a decision I made a while back.  Deciding to be happy has resulted in unorthodox faith, irreverance, misplaced modfiers and a deep appreciation of cheap wine.

If you have seen fireflies dance in a July cornfield, you are happy.

So yeah, damn straight I'm happy.  And I hope you are, too, my friend.

               

                                ...as he makes up his mind to be. - Abraham Lincoln

I Prefer Crows

Knowing there is no way to compete with Wallace Stevens, I nonetheless embarked on my own study on crows, as I prefer them to blackbirds.

I

four and twenty blackbirds
baked in a pie; no one
wants to eat crow

II

it's about four miles
they say, as the crow flies.
but they don't know crows

III

crows are numbered three
and sometimes five
they are at sixes and sevens
along the ditchline

IV

a murder of crows
sampling a roadside buffet
dusk on Loran Road

V

Wallace Stevens viewed
blackbirds in thirteen verses.
I prefer the crow.

VI

big-shouldered, swaggering crows
come in for a landing
on icy rooftops

VII
crows have blunt, square tails
ravens' are elegantly curved
or it's vice versa

VIII...

Wallace Stevens

I discovered Wallace Stevens' poetry while I was in graduate school - how he escaped my attention before then remains a wonder to me.  I'm a huge fan:  he was an insurance man, worked every day in an insurance office for forty years or something - made up poetry in his head while he walked to work, then had his secretary transcribe it.  A wonder.  No grim Robert Frost, he; no brooding over roads that diverged in the woods.

My daughter, Hannah, knew I was writing bird haikus and sent me this:

Wallace Stevens, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

in my haste

in my haste I
cut
the wrong stem, and
the small tight buds
fell,
all hope gone

The Ellipse

You say that,
but...

and the problem lies in the
ellipsis

the undefined unstated
conditions that will later
appear,
tacked on like Martin Luther's
theses

requirements
or 
boundaries
around an otherwise generous
offer

Life is full of ellipses,
arbitrary barbed-wire
casually strung across
dream fields,
limiting possibilities,
shrinking horizons,
changing forever
the
landscape

Vice Versa

I thought you wanted
to be with me, but you really
wanted me to be
with you.

It's not at all the same thing

Bullies of the Bird Feeder

Stern, handsome bluejays,
elegant in their disdain.
Move over!  Coming through!

Birds of a Feather

Stately cardinals
and their subtle partners gather
birds of a feather

Brilliant cardinals peck
at shiny black sunfower seed
spilt from the feeder

Bright crested cardinals
peck at shiny sunflower seed
spilt black in the snow

obviously, some work to be done, but a start - the female cardinals are so dull compared to their partners, but in their own right are lovely if not right next to the males.  Hmmmm....

Owl at Sunset

We were out ice-fishing (not fishing for ice, silly) at sunset on a slough off the Mississippi when the most brilliant purple, blue and orange bruise of a sunset lasted at least twenty minutes - it was mesmerizing.  At the very end, when dusk descended, a hoot owl came out of the woods and settled in an elm at the end of the point where the river meets the slough.

an owl hoots lonely
in the savage blue sunset
over the frozen river

bird haiku

starting a new project - my deck is the stage for bird-watching - so, in honor of my brightly-feathered friends...they are beautiful beggars and I cannot resist luring them into my view.  If I were more of a photographer, I'd get better pictures, but alas! that talent is my son's - check out his page at http://0010010.blogspot.com/




Mendicants.  Begging
exuberantly, brilliant
bold vagabonds

Ode to the Black-Capped Chickadee

Perhaps the most persistent and demanding at the bird feeder, friendly and unafraid - they scold me when I don't get the feeder filled soon enough.  I tried a haiku and my version of a tantra:

Chick-a-dee-dee-dee
First at the feeder each day
Doffing their black caps

Chick-a-dee-dee-dee, they call
crowding the feeder;
first in line every morning,
tipping their little black caps
to the rising sun.

'Dancehall of the Dead'*

Save me a waltz
in the Dancehall of the Dead.
sooner or later,
that hand will be dealt
and we'll see,
yes, we'll see
what lies ahead.

We'll all turn that corner
into the unknown.
I'll follow, you lead,
and we'll take our turn.
And we'll see,
yes, we'll see
what lies ahead.

We've had enough practice,
Lord only knows.
We glide, we dip,
I step on your toes.
And we'll see,
yes, we'll see
what for us lies ahead
in the dim-lighted Dancehall
The Dancehall of the Dead.

*Tony Hillerman book title

In God We Trust

We can only hope
we don't get what
we deserve,
don't reap what we sow,

and pray there's a merciful God
or Goddess up there
taking pity
on people who do
the best they can
and still fuck it up

Someone taking pity
on those of us who know better
and do it anyway,
who have been irreverent
but sincere.
You gotta love our imperfection,
we hope.

We pray to a lesser god,
one who might have been human
in some incarnation,
and finds us more amusing
than annoying,
and who listens to the saints who love us,
to whom we pray,
undeserving but hopeful,
trusting in the unknown
and in our better selves.

January Thaw

It's one of those days
when 30 degrees Farenheit
seems warm

and the tired snow mottles
near-bare fields needing
a new blanket.

The birds are not so ravenous
at the feeder
and the dogs track mud
into the shop.

We sail into the morning,
heavy boots left behind,
coats flapping in the wind;
we are hatless
a spring in our step.

We believe, for the moment,
for the day,
that maybe this winter won't
be so bad,
after all.

'In the Light of the Angel Choir'

I have been reading Hildegard de Bingen, a 12th century mystic - she was fraught with guilt and self-recrimination, traits that do not tend to inspire me, but humility runs not so deep in our age.

There is no reasoning, no pondering we can achieve over the tragedy of the Newtown children; I cannot get my head around it at all.  I cannot absorb or think it, such a thing.  I said my novena, I keep them and their families in my prayers, but the rote prayers I learned in Catechism have not brought me succor.

The following was inspired by the quote above.  It consists of 26 words, in honor of the number of children and their teachers.



                           'In the Light of the Angel Choir'*

               The angels weep to receive you, beloved innocents.

               May Your perpetual light shine upon them, O Lord,
               and blessings from our deepest heart.

               Rest in peace.



*from a poem of the same title by HDB

Just around the corner...

from the Botswana detective ladies, who are full of charming aphorisms, this take on the afterlife:

she was not certain of what constituted such an afterlife, where the late people went, what they did, whether they could hear us, or that was just a conceit on our part, but she thought they 'went around some corner we have yet to turn'

I'm liking that, it's vague enough to encompass any number of theories and beliefs.  As we age, some of us become more sure of our beliefs, some more skeptical, many times depending upon how much loss we have suffered, and the source of that loss.  One of my dear aunts, upon my father's death, told me she really wasn't so sure about the afterlife.  I was shocked.  My own skepticism was one thing; my religious aunt, who had sung in her church choir for over fifty years, had begun to wonder herself.  I was seeking her certainty that my Dad was out there somewhere playing cards and golfing.  She made this remark as we went into the church for the funeral Mass.  There's nothing like a requiem mass to reassure you that someone is still peddling Heaven.

So at Christmas, and Epiphany, we look for the light.  Our solstice remains changeless:  the light comes, the days lengthen, and we look to Spring.

The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection

From Alexander McCall Smith's series about Botswana ladies who detect:

'...it is important that there should be places where not a great deal happens because such places remind us that life is not entirely and exclusively made up of exciting or significant events.  Every life needs spells of calm, every life needs expanses of time when noting much occurs, when one may sit for several hours in the same place and gaze upon static things, upon some waxen-leafed desert plant, perhaps, or a patch of dry grass.  Or a group of cattle standing under a tree for the shade, the slow flicking movement of their tails the only indication that the are animate beasts, not rocks; or a sky across which no clouds, or perhaps only the merest wisp of white, move.'

Sunday Afternoon

the turkeys now come
in late afternoon,
a broad phalanx of
big black birds
on the march across
the cornfield

they march eastward, lined up
north and south;
a turkey scout out in front,
leading the way to a bend
in the Plum River
where they roost