Landscape as Metaphor

Absence, photo by Drew Myron

Keeping Things Whole

In a field

I am the absence

of field.

This is

always the case.

Wherever I am

I am what is missing.

When I walk

I part the air

and always

the air moves in   

to fill the spaces

where my body’s been.

We all have reasons

for moving.

I move

to keep things whole.

— Mark Strand

I have absence on my mind. A sort of seamlessness. Land meets sky with no distinction. Someone called this blur an ordinary loneliness.

Somewhere is a center, then a horizon as a single grounding line — of fence or hill or endlessness — holding us in or keeping us out. I'm not sure which. 

As often happens, I discover a poem that holds what I feel but can't articulate. Poem as map, as landmark, as grounding and center. Thank you Mark. 

What's in your (emotional, physical, mental) landscape?

Thankful Tuesday: Find, fancy, forget

Island House by Andrew Wyeth

Because it's winter and we need an early and extra dose of gratitude (and Thursday is just too far away), it's Thankful Tuesday. Please join me in a pause and perspective shift by expressing gratitude for people, places, things and more. 

On this Thankful Tuesday, I am grateful for:

1.Andrew Wyeth 

For this:

A landscape becomes a stage for a crisis of thought.

And this:

"I think anything . . .  which is contemplative, silent, shows a person alone — people always feel is sad. Is it because we've lost the art of being alone?"

—from The Art of Andrew Wyeth

2. Unaswerables

The Book of Questions, by Pablo Neruda, is a slim collection I often forget, find, fancy, and forget again. Like a horoscope or fortune cookie, today I dip in and find: 

Is it true sadness is thick

and melancholy thin?

and this:

In winter, do the leaves live

in hiding with the roots?

What did the tree learn from the earth

to be able to talk with the sky? 

3.  Thrum of Winter

People are dying, still and again. In my personal life, my professional life. Even this season — winter — feels like a deep thrum of silence. 

Yes, yes, I know, where there is darkness there is light. This is life: births, deaths, hellos, goodbyes, and the great stretch of dailyness in which we are stretched between dishes, laundry, office, errands and chores.

We forget this is living only because it seems like existing — until it ends, and then we cherish the mundane routine as if it were a gripping movie we wish to see just once more. We are actors and audience. We are clapping, then nodding off, in a loop of begins and ends. 

I don't want to count the bodies, tally our grief. And yet, we do, don't we? We justify our agony. This is why, and this and this. But grief isn't logical,  so the score means nothing, and yet, everything.  

4. Maudlin

Am I maudlin? Yes, I am, if only to wake myself, to stir the sadness with something more than understanding, to stir the understanding with something more than tears, to stir the tears with something more than surrender.  

5. Rowing 

but I am rowing, 

I am rowing

though the wind 

pushes me back.

— Anne Sexton

6. Blast from the Past

The Mary Tyler Moore Show

I cannot stop watching this landmark television show. I'm on a binge, cheering for Mary Richard's burgeoning career, independence, friendship and fashion. Thank you 1970s. 

And that theme song!

Love Is All Around 

by Sonny Curtis

Who can turn the world on with her smile?

Who can take a nothing day

And suddenly make it all seem worthwhile?

Well, it’s you girl and you should know it

With each glance and every little movement you show it

Love is all around, no need to fake it

You can have the town, why don’t you take it?

You’re gonna make it after all

How will you make it on your own?

This world is awfully big

And all this time you’re all alone

Well it’s time you started livin’

It's time you let someone else do some giving

Love is all around, no need to fake it

You can have the town, why don’t you take it?

You’re gonna make it after all

You’re gonna make it after all

Your turn: What are you thankful for today? 

On Sunday: Shift

Writing doesn’t heal things; it shifts things.  

By writing something down, you move it from

your heart to your hand, and that distance is

often enough to do something else with the

feelings.

— Kate Gray

Envy is Exhausting

Headlined 

The chicest people

you've never heard of

wake up with more energy

eat better, sleep longer

feel happier + find

more time for balance.

Some days it feels impossible

to rise, shine, believe

in good and

heartwarm

the world.

— Drew Myron

This is a poem "ripped from the headlines."

Also known as a found poem, a cut-up poem, a warm up poem & an exercise for the writing muscle.

This poem is also a reminder why I should give up fashion/lifestyle magazines. 

Tell me, what are you writing?

Cut Up, Cut Down, Cut Away

What's your trick?

To get out of my head and onto the page, I sometimes need to 'trick' my mind with a Cut Up Poem.

Some writers cut words from magazines and arrange them into lines and stanzas. Others gather, scatter & place their own orphan lines (phrases they wrote but haven't yet placed in a piece) to use as a foundation for a new poem. 

Whatever your method — cut up, cut down, cut away, cut back — this approach steers the mind into new territory. The best part of this prompt is the bubble of fresh associations and unexpected themes. You may be surprised where the poem takes you, and even a 'bad' poem is good exercise for the writing muscle.

Traveling, Questions While

Was I born this blistered, all cramp and knots?

Did I grow from scrubby plain to bear

every prickle, thistle and thorn?

Even now, after so many years, I still

travel through noise and discord, winded

and drawn across endless landscape.

Is sadness a habit?

I did not calculate the heart

how heavy this muscle

prone to stutter and stall

how tired and worn.

Who knows why you love 

why you can’t and why

you keep trying? 

Consider how you carry your

own weather, stormy or steady, how 

you study the horizon for every change.

What if you lost your self in the distance

spending your silence on the rise and ache

of this long answerless road?

— Drew Myron

Bone Structure

The Mill, by Andrew Wyeth, 1959

1.

"I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure in the landscape — the loneliness of it — the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show."

— Andrew Wyeth 

The Art of Andrew Wyeth 

2.

Opal died today. Unexpected. 

It’s always a surprise to me, though we are in a nursing home and nearly everyone is ill and elderly. 

There's not much talk, as if it is routine, and of course it is. And yet, even when expected, every passing feels fresh and unexpected. I haven't found words for this startle and weight — something like sadness but with a puncture that lodges in remote crevices of body and mind.  

3.

While hanging the memorial announcement, Ada watches my every move, watches me hang the board, watches me straighten the frame. She does not speak, never speaks. But today, her eyes are steady and from her wheelchair, she reaches for my hand. I bend close and talk quietly.

“Your hair looks nice,” I say. She stares at me, eyes soft.

I try again, “You look good in pink.”

She murmurs, her eyes fixed on mine, as if to speak. But we do not talk, just look into eyes, back and forth, with some tender wordless exchange. 

I say goodbye, I’ll see her again, because this is what you say. Because I say it again and again to the old and confused, to the dying. We are accustom to goodbyes and yet, and yet, it always jolts. Maybe I’m not alone in this. Maybe Ada is with me, reaching out to mark a moment, saying every death deserves a pause.  

4.

I've started a file: Things to say after a death. There's been so many, I've run out of words. 

5. 

In the writing group, we pen letters to ourselves:

Dear Younger Me, writes Betty, I wish I could go back and appreciate life more. 

6.

“Can I get you anything?” I ask Lucy, who is sitting alone, yawning.

We exchange hellos and she smiles wanly, a sign of her decline. Once buoyant and cheery, she now speaks slowly, if at all, and with much effort. 

“There’s no getting,” she says with a half smile, and I think she knows, more than any of us, about these ends.  

* Names have been changed to protect privacy.

With Resolve

swift — a blackout poem by drew myron

In this new year, let's not make plans, projects or promises.

Let's start here, now, with small measures like this: 

Be swift to be kind.

Isn't this everything and enough? 

Good Books of 2018

Ahhh, don't you love these languid days between Christmas and New Year? 

For readers and writers and those who enjoy soft unstructured time, it's an excuse to sink into books without distraction or guilt. And a chance to look back with gratitude at books that have entertained, elevated and sustained. 

Here are some of my favorite books I read this year (not necessarily books published in 2018):

FICTION

 
The Great Believers
by Rebecca Makkai

I have just a few chapters left in this page-turner and it just may be my favorite novel of 2018. It's a wrenching and real character study of shame and despair of AIDS in the 1980s. 

 
Little Fires Everywhere
by Celeste Ng

A slow-burning story about a small town thrown into disarray by a court dispute, with a simmering plot on the complicated angst of family love.

Nutshell 
by Ian McEwan 

A classic tale of murder and betrayal, and such an odd, delightful, unexpected novel.

The Italian Teacher
by Tom Rachman

A novel with a slow start but phenomenal build, with unexpected twists and a nicely wistful conclusion. (My favorite of his novels is The Imperfectionists).

MEMOIR

 

Calypso
by David Sedaris

Here's my new discovery: David Sedaris is best enjoyed by audiobook. An animated performer, Sedaris tells a story with vivid voice and comedic timing that leaves me laughing out loud. I'll never "read" him again. (My favorite of his audiobooks is Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls)

My Misspent Youth: Essays
by Megan Daum

I'm late to the party on this one but glad I caught up. I lived briefly in New York, and while not usually nostalgic, this collection of sharp and honest essays brought back the wonder and ache of those Manhattan days. 

ESSAY

Notes from a No Man's Land: American Essays 
by Eula Bliss 

I'm still not sure if I like this book but months later I keep thinking about it so it definitely stirred me — and isn't that the best kind of reading experience? Reviewer Robert Polito sums my sentiment:  " . . . a mix of insistence and quandary, as though she is despairing and pressing on simultaneously." 

Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give
by Ada Calhoun 

On our first date I told my now-husband that I didn't believe in the institution of marriage. And so, this collection, both sharp and tender, hits me where I live and love. "By staying married, we give something to ourselves and to others: hope. Hope that in steadfastly loving someone, we ourselves, for all our faults, will be loved; that the broken world will be made whole," she writes. "To hitch your rickety wagon to the flickering star of another fallible human being — what an insane thing to do. What a burden, and what a gift."

NON-FICTION

The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use if for Life
by Twyla Tharp 

From the renowned choreographer, an excellent, practical guide to fostering creativity.

A Bittersweet Season: Caring for Our Aging Parents — and Ourselves
by Jane Gross

A daunting but valuable first-person account from a New York Times columnist navigating the labyrinth of health care and housing choices for her mother.  "Wherever I was, I wasn’t where I was supposed to be, and I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to be doing . . . The car was my sanctuary. Before heading home from the Meadowview, with my mother snug in bed, I slumped over the steering wheel, sobbing. Across America, in parking lots like this one, middle-aged daughters do this all the time. I never noticed until I became one of them."

SHORT STORIES

You Think It, I'll Say It
by Curtis Sittenfeld

Months after tearing through this collection, I'm still pierced by the sharp and poignant ways we love and hurt one another. With echoes of Ann Beattie and Lorrie Moore, Sittenfeld, known primarily as a novelist, shines in the short form too. 

POETRY

Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting
by Kevin Powers

I wasn't looking for poetry when I stumbled across this book, and that makes the discovery all the better. Iraq war veteran Kevin Powers has created a deeply affecting portrait of a life shaped by war — and, frankly, it's a voice of experience I haven't read nearly enough. Read the title poem here. 

Believing is Not the Same as Being Saved
by Lisa Martin 

It's not a perfect book of poetry, uneven in spots and needing an editor to tighten the gems. But there are stunners in this collection that make my heart lurch with recognition.

Remind me, is this how it always goes?

There’s a way of speaking as if the difference

matters, as if the road home is finite—everything

begins and ends somewhere, like your hand

in mine . . .  The mind

seeks a place where it can learn to lie down.

— from Map For the Road Home

Your Turn: What books stirred and stayed with you this year?

Good Books of 2017

Good Books of 2016

Good Books of 2015

Good Books of 2014

Good Books of 2013

Good Books of 2012

Good Books of 2011

Thankful Thursday: Sometimes

sometimes when, by drew myron

Because attention attracts gratitude and gratitude expands joy, it's time for Thankful Thursday.

From the small to the immense, from the puny to the profound, what are you thankful for today?

Sometimes when 

the light is just right

like today, I come to

a quiet place and sit

at a wood table where

the slant of sun shines

and for a moment, or

even minutes, I am

exactly where I should

be, doing exactly what

is good and true:

with gratitude,

thinking of you.

— Drew Myron 

Don't tell me your dream

Art by Susannah Liguori 

1.
No one wants to hear about your dream. How vivid and compelling. How it shakes you still, that image, this morning over coffee and conversation. This conversation is over; let's talk about me. 

2. 
I had a dream of frogs in my house. I told no one, but Google says frogs mean fortune or fear. Just like everything in life.

3. 
Confession: In a book or poem, when I come upon a dream sequence I always skip ahead. 

4.
Don't tell me your dream. I'll have to feign interest and that wears us both. Well, not you. You look perky, and I just wanna go back to bed. 

5.
In the year since my mother died, I've dreamed of her just once. I woke up reassured. But I did not write the dream down and now she's gone again. 

6. 
Dreams are vague and real, foreboding and foretelling. Dreams mean nothing. And everything. 

7. 
Yesterday an old man with sad eyes told me his dream:

He and his dying wife return to the island where they honeymooned 60 years ago. They are happy, she is healthy and young. "She is just like she used to be," he says, with a strained smile and tears.  

Hushed and slow, like a prayer or a plea, he offers his vision and I accept the gift.  

8. 
Okay, I say, tell me more. 

Sunday night, reading

1.

I'm not certain of much, but this:  

There is nothing better than a busy week as it unspools into Sunday evening, in a quiet house, with a good book, and your mind, finally, finally, finds a peaceful ease.  

2.

Today's good line: 

"One thing I've learned, Father — that in life it's best to keep the then and the now and the what's-to-be as close together in your thoughts as you can. It's when you let gaps creep in, when you separate out the intervals and dwell on them, that you can't bear the sorrow."

— from The All of It, a novel by Jeannette Haien

3.

It's time for a literary lookback. 

I'm making stock (turkey bones on the stove) and taking stock (of good books). It's time for round up and review: What have I read? What have I loved?

I can hardly recall last week's novel, let alone of year of books. Was it a bleak year in stories? A crushing season of poems?

Please, help revive my reading memory: 

What good books did you read this year? 

Love that line!

She had that uncomfortable feeling that one has

when one has not been wholly kind or wholly true.

— Passing, a novel by Nella Larsen

Thankful Thursday: Not Trying

Because the world is heavy, and our hearts too, it's time for redirection. Please join me for Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for things small and large, from the puny to the profound. 

I find the best things when not trying. This week I'm thankful for: 

• Goodwill Boutique
Yesterday I scored a new-with-tags suede coat, a Coach laptop bag, and Cole Haan wedges. Do you have a Goodwill Boutique near you? No, really, not just a Goodwill but a boutique version in which they sort donations for gently used designer brands. The prices are higher than a traditional thrift store, but the quality is better. And best of all, they sort through the pilled, spilled and spoiled clothing so I don't have to. 

• Scooby-Doo Stamps
"Charismatic canine," the United States Postal Service calls the Great Dane character from the 1970s-era cartoon series. I'm loving the fun and inspired stamps lately: Mister Rogers, Oscar de la Renta, Andrew Wyeth . . . even popsicle scratch-n-sniff stamps!

• A Timely Line

Somewhere, someone dies again and I think

there went another piece of me 

— Lisa Martin
excerpt from Sonnet for what we resolve into

The best poems are discovered by accident. You're looking for this or that and a poem peers out, calling. I'm ragged with world events (another shooting, another fire, another crisis) when I open this book — where did it come from? did I buy it? was it a gift? — and suddenly the line floods my head, my hands, my heart. 

It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things & more. What are you thankful for today? 

On Ordinary

A static gloom covers the day, hours of gray. 

The day is so without event, so without emotion, I know now this is what is called ordinary. I don’t know what to do with ordinary except to call it a suspension between sad and sunny. 

I’m having a do-nothing day, I announce to another (but mostly to myself), and then stumble across this:  

“The women . . . are interesting because they’re permitted to risk being boring, which feels somehow like a luxury. It’s a relief.”

_____

“Boredom is often dismissed as a lack of imagination — this not true. Boredom is a signal that we are indeed imaginative creatures, and that the existential distress of being in a state of blah is often the mind readying itself for the epiphany," writes Nick Cave. 

I’m not bored exactly, but I am not moved. Is this the blah before brilliance? It’s too much to wish because this creative stupor is a gray that has hovered for what feels like forever. Ordinary turns time inside-out, both enlarging its importance and diminishing your ability. In its lack of color and light, ordinary does absolutely nothing. 

_____

 
But what if ordinary is the lull that lets light in?

It happens so often now I don’t even notice. I’m chatting with a woman and in the course of our conversation she tells me of her husband's death. Her eyes soften and we talk slower and lower and time wells between us in a way that seals us in a moment quiet and safe.  

“Intimacy is such a hushed and heartbreaking thing that I think it happens between strangers every bit as much as it does between lifelong lovers, sometimes even more so," writes Robert Vivian in The Least Cricket of Evening. 

_____

Lately, an elderly man and I exchange hellos and talk of the weather. Each day I learn a little more. He is quiet and proud but his eyes carry heartache. He apologizes — for emotion, for sharing, I do not know — and I will mew words that say nothing that matters. Still, each day we start again with hellos and smiles. 

And this is ordinary. These moments of exchange.

I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart), wrote e.e. cummings.

And so we carry secrets and stories, aches and tears — all of it so human and heartbreaking, so beautifully gray and ordinary.  

Love that line, but . . .

 
Turning her back

on the toneless expanse,

beyond the window,

she contemplated

the room, which

was the colour of

over-cooked veal." 

— from Hotel Du Lac
    a novel by Anita Brookner

I love that line, but I don't love the book. 

In the same way I sometimes love a stanza but not the whole poem.

Or love a friend but not her opinion. 

I am large, I contain multitudes, wrote Whitman. 

And so we expand, stretching across the thorny contradiction to get to a single beautiful bloom.  

Thankful Thursday (everyday)

On Highway 97 in Oregon

It's Thankful Thursday. Please join me in a weekly pause to appreciate people, places, things & more. 

This week I'm thankful for the small things (weather, letters, poems) that help me feel gratitude for the big things (love, learning, sincerity): 

1.
A Letter Love Story
A woman tells me she met her husband through writing letters.

The two lived in separate states, had mutual friends, and courted by mail — long, hand-written letters that offered kindness, humor, and truth (I'm fat, she wrote. I don't like bars or church, he wrote). Two months in, they were engaged, having never met or talked on the phone. A month later they married. They've been happily wed for 45 years. 

2.
Poem By Chance
The list of books I want to read is long but sometimes a chance encounter jumps to the top. At the library I was looking for a chair and found a book of poems instead: Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting. I thought it was a book of heartbreak though letters (and that combo is sure to reel me in). But this was better: a collection of powerfully restrained poems from Kevin Powers, an Iraq War veteran. Here's an excerpt from the opening poem, Customs: 

We passed the welcome sign
five miles ago. Another crossing 
missed. On some naked mountainside
a small signal fire is lit. I can tell you exactly 
what I mean. It is night again and endless
are the stars. I can tell you exactly
what I mean. The world has been replaced
by our ideas about the world. 

3. 
The Brilliance of Good TV 
All praises for David Simon, the writer of television tales. I've recently revisited my two favorites: The Wire, about the drug trade and its reverberations in every aspect of urban life; and Treme, exploring the emotional, physical, financial, and cultural aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. 

Both shows make complex issues real with writing and acting that is deep, honest and accurate. With each episode, I laugh, cry, and can't wait to watch another. 

4. 
Blue Sky, Yellow Leaves, Warm Sun 
For days I say the same phrase to everyone I meet: Can you believe this beautiful weather?

Crisp mornings, cool nights, warm days, blue sky, yellow leaves, day after glorious day. It's a script of happiness because sometimes there are not enough words to convey the gratitude of good weather, so I just repeat my mantra like a contented fool. 

Your turn:  What are you thankful for today? 

Fast Five with Patricia Bailey

“I feel better on
the days I write. Happier. Clearer. 
I’m unsettled when I’m not writing." 

 — Patricia Bailey
author of The Tragically True
Adventures of Kit Donovan

Welcome to Fast Five Interviews, where we ask five questions to
open the door to know more:

Patricia Bailey — Trish — lives in Klamath Falls, Oregon, a small town in southern Oregon. Her debut novel, The Tragically True Adventures of Kit Donovan tells the story of a sharp and spunky 13-year-old girl who defies age and gender expectations to stand up for what’s right.

The young adult novel has earned numerous accolades, including 2018 Oregon Book Award for Children’s Literature, the Oregon Spirit Award from the Oregon Council of Teachers of English, and the 2018 Willy Literary Award from Women Writing the West. 

What writers or books have most strongly influenced you?  

This shifts for me almost day-to-day, depending on what I’m thinking and what I’m currently working on. That said, I think the one book that stands out for me the most is Pam Houston’s Cowboys Are My Weakness. I remember finding it at a bookstore when I was in college and devouring it. It was the first book I read that felt familiar. I knew these people. I’d been to these places. I had stories like this. It was the very first hint that maybe I had things to say that people would read. That my stories might actually matter too. 

What’s the best writing advice you’ve received?

I’m a slow writer, so I think the best advice I’ve gotten is to just take the time you need to get the story right. I’d love to be able to write a quick draft and go from there, but it just doesn’t work for me. Remembering that my process is my process and it takes how long it takes is helpful when I’m feeling old and overwhelmed.

Writing — and publishing — can be difficult work. In the face of challenge, what keeps you going? 

I think the act of writing does. I feel better on the days I write. Happier. Clearer. I’m unsettled when I’m not writing. So, if I can remember that the act of writing makes me happy - no matter how hard the day is – and focus on just that part, the other worries seem to shrink a bit.

Bonus Question:

I’m a word collector and keep a running list of favorite words. What are your favorite words?

Glimmer, jellyfish, moon, smarmy, moxie, shiver, loaf, and about a million more I can’t recall just know. I really should keep a list.

On Sunday: Orphans

As one week ends and another begins, what keeps you — and what will you let go?

orphans (noun):  in typography, words or phrases that do not fit; in writing, phrases and lines discarded from original text but which the writer hopes will shine in a new work.

[ 1 ]

The morning smelled of fresh laundry. 

[ 2 ]

these smooth suede hills

  sedge and reed

           stubble and stalk

     cheat grass and ash

soft winter wheat

[ 3 ]

For years it was winter. 

[ 4 ]

Some days, I feel so lucky.
A door opens, a smile widens, I am let into a life.

[ 5 ] 

Some days I wake up missing you, counting the days and dreading the markers that will make you more gone. You are here, in my mirror, in my tears, everywhere and nowhere. 

[ 6 ]

"Each poem is a miracle that has been invited to happen." 

— William Stafford

[ 7 ]

The mind is always editor: sorting, sifting, discarding. 

How much energy it takes to write and rewrite a life. 

On Sunday, driving home

 Doubletake in Rawlins, Wyoming. Photo by Andre Myron.

1.
Sometimes when you are driving you begin to know things you can’t see or touch but have always carried: the way a jaw tightens to say nothing, how eyes can dart away a shame, and birds how they form along the telephone wire, each with a secret in a long silence of miles. 

On a road for hours, you are sleepy with quiet when a hunger like longing wants the words in your throat to meet the world but knows, like a rain coming, that the feeling will fall and quickly pass. So you hold back and in the suspension the world waits and grows into something similar to illness and you remember the way a fever clarified your life.

Your map is a quilt of lines and dots, and you wear every landscape. You are numb with canyons and hills, with scrub and rock. Every terrain says try me, and so you are haybale and scorched field, broken window and rusted phone. You hold heat and storm, and keep breathing, slow and pronounced, over and over like a prayer or a plea. You are throat and lungs and fear.

Because stillness is a gift, you keep at the wheel, holding tight, holding on. 

2.
If you ask, I'll say I'm happy. But I usually add the ish, happyish, wellish, because each moment is singular and subject to change.

3.
Was I born this cramped, all blister and knots? These weeds inside me, prickle and thistle, were they planted or did I emerge from scrubby plain, growing wind-worn and hard all on my own? 

4. 
These Sunday nights, raising sadness and regret. The solitude of Sundays, the letting go and gearing up. Looking back meets going forward, a loss and weight all at once. 

5. 
On Sunday, poem as prayer:

A quality of attention has been given to you:

when you turn your head the whole world

leans forward. It waits there thirsting

after its names, and you speak it all out as it

comes to you: you go forward into forest leaves

holding out your hands, trusting all encounters,

telling every mile, "Take me home." 

— William Stafford

 
excerpt from "For People with Problems About How to Believe"
a poem that appears in An Oregon Message: Poems  

You Belong In Your Life

reminder no. 10 in a series • by drew myron

This is number ten one in a series of reminders that serve as notes to myself (and now you). Consider this a public service announcement, poetic nudge, sticky note, or just idle chatter.