Cultiv8ourlives - Here Are Things That Light Me Up

Cultivation

by Dorothea Tanning

Cultivating people can be arduous,

With results as uncertain as weather.

Try oysters, meerkats, turnips, mice.

My mouse field was a triumph of

Cultivation—pink noses poking

Through quilts of loam, scampering

In the furrows—until the falling

Dwarves (it was that time of year)

Began landing on my field. Fear for

Its harvest had me down on hands

And knees muttering, “Not here,”

My nails clawed at tangles of fat

Dwarves crushing mouse families.

Then, unbelievably, it was over.

By morning every dwarf, maddened

By nibbling mice, had fled the field.

Now, as before, each day, dozens

Of perfect mice leave for the city.

There, they have made many friends

Among computers, and with them

Are developing skills inconceivable

To their forebears. Already, these

Cultivated mice and their computers

Penetrate guilty secrets. Soon they will

Prevail over the turmoil that defines

This darkest of ages. And they will

Find me, asleep in my cave.

“I don’t have anyone expecting me to produce anything. And in fact, when somebody says to me, “can you draw me a bird,” like my publisher did. And I said, “Sure.” And then I couldn’t draw him a bird. And I realized that was a part of it. The freedom to do what I enjoyed had to come with no expectations and that I did it only for myself.”

— Amy Tan (Unintended Memoir)

What My Father Knows

by Ross Shideler

My father raised me to know

that I am not different

from anyone else. This knowledge

makes me respond to you all

with doubt.

If you dreamed

as an eight year old

of shoveling coal into a furnace

and the furnace exploded

blowing you sky high,

and you saw from up there

while hanging to a stove pipe

the entire city, then

came down slowly

to the basement again,

why don’t you wish

to be a bird as I do?

And assuming

that you discovered around fourteen

that your parents were nice

but not your own

and you watched every night

for a starship to arrive,

why aren’t you aware of how alien

we all are to this planet?

Perhaps most confusing

is that I know you have spent

as many days and nights

as I have fearing death

and dreaming of a private escape

or of a discovery to save everyone,

yet still you seem to forget

what heroes and heroines we are

to get up every morning,

to go to bed every night.

Thankyou Eric Carle