MY NOTES: I am working on this posting Tuesday, January 21st, and outside everything is white, so this poem & title are perfect for today. Also, like Lynn notes, my (older) brother & I used to sit for hours at an old card table in the bedroom I shared with my older sister and build puzzles, piece by piece and at the end, separate the remaining pieces and build in a race to see who could finish the puzzle more quickly. This poem reminded me of that time and triggered my gift of a puzzle to my brother when we visited over the week-end of Martin Luther King’s birthday. We worked almost all day Saturday on the puzzle & it became a kind of meditation and escape at the same time. Puzzles are wonderful distractions!
P.S. My sister-in-law told me her friend builds puzzles on the Internet. Not sure I would like this, since I like to feel the pieces being interlocked.
The day I worked on this all was white outside my window, like the puzzle!
To love jigsaw puzzles, you have to love trouble –
the mad messing of a picture, the slow steps back to art.
Years ago, my brother and I spent hours
breaking up then piecing back
The Skating Pond by Currier & Ives,
Remington’s The Old Stage-Coach of the Plains –
the cardboard pixels colonizing
the game table in the family room.
There was satisfaction in the fitting together
the doing of the definite task
then some days of admiration
of the solved thing before the sundering.
Once someone gave us a white puzzle,
a real head-breaker, the blank pieces
many and small like the counties of a state.
This was fitting for the sake of fitting.
No art in it that we could see, but we stuck to it,
and after a while the pieces began to clump together
like new snow on the lawn.
I remember the way our small talk
scribbled itself over the gathering page:
something about a math bee and Old Man Sprague
who kept sheep in his backyard and had a gun.
We nibbled popcorn, made Montana take shape
with its three sides and human profile,
the pieces knit like bone.
When the white puzzle was complete
we loved the way it lay like moonlight on the floor
then sat before our conquered space,
two Alexanders wanting more.
“The White Puzzle” is from Lynn Levin’s collection Fair Creatures of an Hour
P.S. Sept. 1, 2014 UPDATE: Lynn now has a website: http://www.lynnlevinpoet.com/ Check it out!
Love it! I am forwarding it to your brother.
Still a favorite pastime for me from childhood, too! Real puzzles on the dining room table and with a puzzle app as well…. you can HEAR the pieces lock together!!
How do you do a puzzle on the computer? ellensue
Hey tɦere ʝust ԝanted tο give you a quick heads up.
The woгds in yoսr article seem to be running off thе screen in Internet explorer.
Ӏ’m not surе if this іs а formatting issue
ߋr sometҺing to dօ witɦ web browser compatibility ƅut I
thоught I’d post to let үou know. Тhe layout look gгeat though!
Hope үou ǥet tҺe ρroblem fixed ѕoon. Μany thanks
When I cut & paste an article or petition from my email to Word Press, it does run off the page. Cannot be helped, but thanx for the heads up anyway.
Ciao, ellensue
What i do not realize is if truth be told how
you’re not really a lot more well-favored than you might be now.
You are very intelligent. You understand therefore considerably in relation to this subject, made me for my part consider it from so many various angles.
Its like men and women are not involved unless it’s something
to do with Woman gaga! Your own stuffs nice. Always take care
of it up!
Thank you, ellensue