what I've learned from life, by Mary Elyn Bahlert
"I love Jesus, who said to us:
heaven and earth will pass away.
When heaven and earth have passed away,
my word will remain.
What was your word, Jesus?
Love? Forgiveness? Affection?
All your words were one word:
Wakeup! - Antonio Machado
If the world hadn’t stopped
its incessant orbit,
its frantic motion – one day to the next –
if all the people hadn’t halted their wars,
their value counted in barrels of oil,
I expect I wouldn’t have seen the sun brightening, blue by blue,
or known the smell of the morning air, fresh,
as I go sniffing like a cat
to catch a whiff of what has gone before.
I would not have opened my window, grateful,
or wondered at the sound of humans calling into the night to give thanks.
I expect I wouldn’t have stopped midday to pray,
my arms lifted beside the lonely tree,
its branches lifted, also, in gratitude
for the magic of the sun, the sky, the dusk and dawn.
We would not have murmured together at the light
of the lilies at dusk,
at the quiet that hangs over the morning air,
at the call of the crow hoarding its bounty:
all of us inhabitants of this magnificent earth.
Mary Elyn Bahlert, 2020
Photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, View Place, 2020
The sky, deep, in autumn
rests deeper in the heavens,
deeper as if it has reached a peak,
the peak of color, of light,
deeper as if creator’s brush
has found the darkest color
and presented it to us for our delight.
If we are watching,
if our eyes are open, waiting with great patience,
if we are watching, waiting –
we disappear into the deepness,
we are set free from the troubles of earth,
we fly into the freedom.
Mary Elyn Bahlert, 09/15/2025
Photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 11/11/2020
I’m always delighted to walk under the Gingko trees in Mountain View Cemetery near our house in Oakland. The branches are full and leaf out over the sidewalk as we pass under them, the shade protecting us from the afternoon sun here in Oakland. And gingko trees hold special memories for me.
When I was a student at Washington High School in Milwaukee, an English teacher gave us the assignment of finding the gingko trees in Sherman Park, a few blocks to the north of the high school, along Burleigh Street. And so I took a walk through the park, looking upward into the trees and finding the ginkgo trees, collecting a few leaves to take with me to complete the assignment.
The upper flat we lived in during my high school years was on North 49 Street, in the block south of Burleigh, and so those trees stood only a few blocks to the east of where my family lived. Many times, I walked through the streets from Center to Burleigh, stamping through the leaves on autumn days, or quickening my pace during the winter as I skirted around icy places on the cement.
The streets were beautiful then, the branches of elm trees and a few maples meeting overhead and over the road, lush green in the summer and bright orange and red in the autumn.
Sometimes, I like to walk along those streets in my memory. They formed an audience to the person I was becoming. And those streets marked the edges of what I knew, even in the years after I stood in a doorway of our flat, looked out into the street, and said aloud: “I don’t belong here.”
I didn’t know it then, but my path would take me far away from those narrow streets, those crowded flats. I didn’t know it then, but I would live for many years in northern California, for many more years than I walked home from school under the trees whose branches covered me, followed me home.
Gingko leaf, from a tree in Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland photo by meb, 9/2025
Our house on Ring Street stood right next to the alley, and from the porch of our upper flat I could see my Grandma Markowski in her long black coat, her head covered in a cotton scarf, as she made her way from her house on Burleigh Street to our house – walking in the alley. Grandma was a babushka, a peasant woman from Ukraine who came to the United States with my Grandpa; he had left his home to find a better life for himself and his children.
The alley was lined on either side with garages. My dad rented a garage down the alley to keep our car out of the weather. When I was a child, we children played outside for hours, close to home when we were little, and farther away as we grew. From the front porch or the small back porch outside our kitchen door at the back, my mother could keep an eye on me as I played.
I have a memory from those times, when I was very young. I am in the bath tub, and Mom is helping me with my bath. As she runs a washcloth over me, and without looking at me, Mom says: “I saw you hit a little girl when you were playing today.”
“That wasn’t me – that was another little girl who looked just like me.”
I see Mom turn her head away, a smile coming to her face. She liked to call me, “Mary, Mary, quite contrary”.
One of the favorite games of kids in my neighborhood those days was playing Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, our television heroes, whose show we watched faithfully every Saturday morning, one in a line-up of shows for children that aired – a new episode every week. Randy Larson, a neighbor boy my age who lived in a flat around the corner on 12th street, played Roy Rogers to my Dale Evans. And one day, as we played our parts, riding our bikes in place of horses – skinny, blond-haired Randy Larson leaned over from the seat of his bike and planted a kiss on my cheek! We laughed!
*
My mother always kept up to date on happenings in Milwaukee. And she read the obituaries, faithfully, in The Milwaukee Journal. If something or someone of note to me had had their name mentioned, she made sure to tell me. And so, one day, I had the news from my mother that Randy Larson had been killed in Vietnam.
In 2015, Jeff and I traveled to Washington, D.C. to meet up with our good friends and traveling buddies from the U.K. – Pat and Tone. While there, we visited the Vietnam Memorial. I had long wanted to see the Memorial, the Vietnam War having made a mark on me as it had on all members of my generation. I looked for Randy’s name on the register, and found his name engraved on the Memorial.
Just another working class kid, a kid who died serving in a War that was not declared a War, his name a memory on a wall.
