Lessons for Pippa

by Susanne von Rennenkampff

Lyric poem, my granddaughter asks, bent over an old crossword book

she found in our basement. Three letters, starts with ‘o’.

I say it, just when she has figured it out: ‘Ode’, which means nothing

to a twelve-year old, though she’s heard the word. I tell her

about the poet who wrote odes about anything, the smallest, most mundane,

even the lowly onion. Growing up with a garden, she knows about onions,

being a reader, she knows the word ode. I want to teach her about both,

not the knowledge but how it feels, how it can touch you just because you

are touching it: the onion, its crinkly skin sloughing off in your hands,

small crumbs of dirt still clinging to both, the small resistance,

roots not yet wanting to let go when you pull it up. The satisfaction

of seeing them lined up in a row, necks all pointing to the same direction.

But how do you tell about feeling, about the essence of a thing,

which cannot be the same for two people, no matter how close.

Does it matter? How about the ode? I want her to be touched

the way I am, the importance of every small thing, the need

to keep a sense of wonder. Slow movements in Mozart’s piano concertos,

the scent of the earth when the first big drops hit after a period of drought.

The way a bean pushes up its bent neck through the soil. The first hint of green

in the poplar grove in May, only a promise. To find a violet

on a dry slope, or, wonder of wonders, an orchid.

Words: heliotrope, liminal, ephemeral, astray. The way it makes me feel

when I watch her at the piano, the dimple that arrives with her smile.

What will I pass on to her? I see myself, a young teenager,

the first awareness of love for what cannot be expressed:

the world, your place in it, the heartache and sadness,

for beauty, its roots deeper than both.

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A long-time farmer and gardener, Susanne von Rennenkampff often takes her inspiration from the natural world and her travels. Her poems have appeared in a number of literary magazines in Canada and the US, including “Room”, “The Antigonish Review”, ”Prairie Fire”, “Grain”, “The Banyan Review”, “Evening Street Review” and, upcoming, “Cirque”. A chapbook of her poetry, “In the Shelter of the Poplar Grove”, was published by The Alfred Gustav Press. She lives in rural Alberta, Canada.