To the coooool notes of the Beatles, “Hey Jude” (“better better better
better”), Frank Sinatra’s “I Wish You Love” (“and in July, a lemonade, to
cool you in the summer shade”), Simon and Garfunkle, “Bridge Over Troubled
Waters” (“like a bridge over troubled waters, I will lay you down”), and
Richard and Mimi Farina, “Pack Up Your Sorrows” (“you’ve got to pack up
your sorrows, and give them all to me, you would lose them, I know how to
use them”), we hear

AND IN JULY A LEMONADE:
A MEDITATION ON TRANSFORMATION
BUTTERFLIES DO IT AND POETS DO IT TOO--
WHAT POETRY MAKES OF LIFE’S LEMONS
Will the change, says Rilke. (Or, depending upon the translator, Want the
transformation). You must change your life. Rumi says yes, no, accept the
state of unknowing; welcome the Guest however interruptive or disruptive;
so says bossy Kabir; and so says Jane Hirshfield—that shining white bull
appearing in your pasture, however bad or confusing news as it seems,
should be treated as a gift with all your hospitality aglow. And so our
show today, for a hot July, is how poets prescribe lemonade out of life’s
lemons. On the headstone of Jackson Pollack’s grave are these words,
“Artists and poets are the raw nerve ends of humanity. By themselves they
can do little to save humanity. Without them there would be little worth
saving.” What work that poets do is *so little* yet enough to make life
worth living, no matter how difficult or full of sorrow? We are savoring
the sweetness of the poetry of transformation, lemons into lemonade, change
that becomes us as we become who we are meant to be on this journey. I
would do it all again, says Wendell Berry. That’s the spirit of lemonade.
So let’s hear Berry, Hirshfield, Rumi, Kabir, Leonard Cohen, Jack Gilbert,
Cavafy (there’s a theme of Greek mythology and living on Greek islands).
Kabir lays out what’s at stake: “Friend, hope for the Guest while you are
alive . . . Jump into experience while you are alive . . .” Hope for
lemons, the white bull in the pasture, interruption, disruption, whatever
threatens to unseat us: so say our poets, giving us a way of knowing what
it means to be alive. Sip, sip, the lemonade, as we slow down, for the news
we need “without which men die miserably every day” (William Carlos
Williams).

© Barbara Mossberg 2013

Write: bmossberg@csumb.edu
Thank you.
And on the Monterey Peninsula, August 3, we celebrate Rumi, “we shall be a
mighty kindness,” bring your favorite Rumi poems and ears and hear Rumi in
Persian!

The little house in Jewell Park, Pacific Grove, sponsored by the City of
Pacific Grove Poet in Residence Program, 4-6 pm. Contact the Pacific Grove
Poetry Collective on facebook!

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