Sunset in the Saguaro National Forest, Arizona

I reached for the bacon and found a poem.

It’s Sunday morning; I am making our weekly brunch in the kitchen: southwestern grits with cheese and salsa. Yellow grits that need the final garnish. I open the freezer, and when I reach for the bacon out falls an envelope addressed to no one. Inside the envelope is a sheet of paper with a typewritten poem beginning I don’t know what gorgeous thing the bluebird keeps saying. The poem is accompanied by a tiny songbird feather, smaller than my little finger, that floats down to my feet. The delicate feather of a bluebird fallen from an unaddressed envelope with a poem found next to the frozen green beans.

Wherever the poem with its bluebird song, and a feather, wherever it came from (no one has yet confessed to putting it in the freezer), the day was permanently altered by mystery and gratitude. I consider it another blessing, regardless of how it came to be beneath the bacon. And why not? There is the continuing story of our bluebird house — it sits in full view of our kitchen, and I am thrilled each spring when the pair returns. But last spring the bluebirds were chased off by the house wrens. This was after they had laid four beautiful blue eggs. When the house wrens took over we grieved the bluebird eggs until the day we found a fledgling struggling alone on the ground. This baby bluebird, whose vanquished parents would not return, died in my son’s open palm. We buried his feathered body with its tiny feet, and its lovely beak that will never sing, with my father’s ashes. Three generations in love with winged things.

For years bluebirds have been in my dream world. These dreams all have the feeling of an unforeseen gift being offered. The unexpected arrival of a poem has a quality similar to the vivid magnificence of the bluebirds that enter my dreams: one retrieved from the velvet night by a falcon standing on the spinning wheel of time; another transformed from a rattlesnake beneath the ancestor tree; and one simply perched on my shoulder, rubbing his bright blue feathers against my cheek, and singing.

These dreams all came after the one where I am carrying a cardboard box with six bluebirds lying on their sides to the trunk of my car. I am on a mission. The birds are quite still and gray, as if dead, but I am handling them in the manner of checking something off my list: place birds in cardboard box into trunk of car. I am startled out of my to-do list mentality by the dream voice shouting, just before I set them down: Wake the sleeping birds! Bam. Even in my dream I woke up. I took this instruction seriously. Just now I am recalling again the untitled poem by Gregory Orr that ends: That, and the beloved’s clear instructions: turn me into song, sing me awake.

Imagine being instructed to become a song, to sing yourself awake…That is the poem I opened our class with earlier this month, in the Saguaro Cactus forest, and it has been working on me ever since. But first, I want to share some images from the students’ work:

We began with large brush strokes on big sheets of paper, using sumi and walnut ink and yellow iron oxide acrylic paint. This “bird” above is by Meg Higgins.

The format for our books was vertical, with the saguaro cactus as our guide: The book pages above are by Romy Colonius (left) and Mary Dennis Kannapell (right). Watercolor, walnut ink and white gel pen on Rives BFK paper.

Book pages from Katie Barnes (top) and Roz Barhaugh (bottom): from drawing exercises and detail of delicate stitching with fine gold thread (bottom right).

Cover and book page by Cynthia Torp: White gouache, sumi and walnut inks, collage

The book covers are on Arches Black Cover paper, using white gouache, watercolor, walnut ink, gold paint, white gel pen. Left to right: Meg Higgins, Katie Barnes, Romy Colonius, Lindy Huber, Cynthia Torp and Happy Price.

Book page by Jacque Parsley: Arches Black Cover paper, gouache, white gel pen & collage

Book pages above by Lynn Cralle: Watercolor, gouache, sumi and walnut inks, collage

I will end with this poem that I referenced above as a way to enter this new year, embracing what I have been given, aiming to follow “the beloved’s clear instructions”. Being grateful for each of you, my readers. Thank you.

This is what was bequeathed us.
This earth the beloved left
And, leaving,
Left to us.
No other world
But this one:
Willows and the river
And the factory
With its black smokestacks.
No other shore, only this bank
On which the living gather.
No meaning but what we find here.
No purpose but what we make.
That, and the beloved’s clear instructions:
Turn me into song; sing me awake.
Untitled, Gregory Orr

What instructions do you imagine you have been given for this new year? I’d love to hear from you.