Stories,,,,,,

I love stories. Now that my two children are too old for me to read to them everynight, I miss it very much. In truth, I think I enjoyed it more than them! Stories tie the human race together and force us to accept our commality. I have seen on more than one occassion when people were unable to listen to any form of reason, they will listen to a story. It's human nature. You can't help but to pause and listen. People want to hear the end, they want to ask questions, they want to know what happened to the charecters. Jesus told stories, because people listened to them, and he could reach them on a whole different level than by arguing or lecturing them. Lecture by the way has been known for a few centuries to be the least effe ctive method of teaching, but is still the universal standard for public school teaching.



We as a society have lost the ability to tell stories. Thosands of years ago, oral traditions were passed down generation to generation through stories told on cold winter nights through elders and respected relatives in the community. They taught morals and lessons, provided hope and direction in times of crisis and imparted tribal identifications and connections. I learned the art of storytelling from my mother, who proably learned it in the depression. She would drive around the towns of her childhood in Northeast, Ct. and tell us about the adventures of her growing up. The time the dam opened while her and her sisters swam downstream, The rat that bit her finger as an infant, the caves and hills the "Leatherman" lived and walked through. I loved these stories, and to this day they remain a huge part of who my mother is to me now. At many a training and staff meeting I have secretly wished "oh please, somebody tell me a story!"

we have lost a lot in losing our stories.

Stories don;t have to be true, however they usually start from truth or have peices of truth woven into them. I get frustrated with people who ask me "is this true?" about my writings. A good story is aLWAYS better than the truth! the truth is somewhat irrelavent....I want a good story!!

So tell a story, or write a story, or as the kids always say "TELL ME A STORY...........AND MAKE IT GOOD!!!

A few poems in story form...

Trackings

I think my cousin Patti
choose the color pink for her footprints.
This was long before the rose granite headstoner was lugged in by hand
to mark my grandmother's resting place.


Naomi,my sister was the youngest then,
only three, new at walking.
She refused to take off her shoes
fussing
till I was afraid gramma would sing a siong about how we always made her cry..
gramma didn't sing today,
only handed her the yellow paper
and hummed as she watched us work,

I helped Naomi trace around that hard shoe,
guided the scissors through the paper
until her steps spread around us like a carpet of sunshine.

My grandmother almost died the year Naomi was conceived.
My mother spent her pregnancy waiting in hospital hallways-
wondering which visit would be the last
always fearing that these child that lay curled in her womb,
as yet, unknown, unnamed,
would be born into a void - unfillable.

My grandmother told those doctors she would live to see this grandchild born!
and "DAM IT!" they should have listened
because she did.
Now Naomi was walking and that beat all the odds!

That day before the sun had set,
every grandchild had left their soles on her walls, and her ceiling.
Each of us leaving a trail of footprints to remind her of who we were after we'd gone.

Patti's was pink
Mine red
Naomi's was yellow.

Naomi is twenty now....
She told me she doesn't remember Gramma:
and a look as empty as those hospital hallways crosses her face.
I tell her I know -
because buried in my mother's old trunk,
we still have the toeless yellow foot to prove it,
I tell her
she was there.


The Call of the Wild ( for my brother)

There was a time
when the call of the wild
shone clear in your wolf eyes;
one moment green, then grey,
the flash of silver fur
seen as the slash of summer sun on your tanned shoulders.
We hoped then
we would always run free;
as wolf and child,
brother and sister,
under the canaopy of leaves.
We tracked the mink and owl,
the hawk and falcon,
trailed them from tree to tree
stopping only to stretch our bodies by the creek.
The wolf had no fear,
neither the deer
only games, mock battles,
desperate chases, feigned death....

Till the night without a moon,
he chased her, the deer;
through a feild of milkweed flowers.
Almost upon her,
he dodged between two poles,
felt the sting of metal barb across his cheek,
the tear of flesh beneath his chin...

and oh the wail.......the wail of the wolf
the wail of the wolf turned boy again!
and the blood,
red and sticky in the black night
warm as life
as we struggled home, to the hospital,
to return
with thirteen stiches and a scar on his throat that would last forever.