Write through this

In times of crisis, I wish my better self to rise to action, to solution, to do something.

Instead, I can’t stop sifting through news at a battering speed. I can’t stop scrolling facebook and feeling jittered with frustration.

And so it is with great relief I found the first poems of the pandemic:

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer is a machine of beautiful work.

Kelli Russell Agodon and Melissa Studdard are sharing daily poems on Instagram under #DailyWave.

“Our goal,” writes Kelli, “is to document through poems these uncertain times, and also to keep our minds off the #coronapocalypse.”

Write on! Uncertain times bring me to my knees, but also to pen, paper, and poems.

What’s going to get you through?

---

Love in the time of distance

Already it’s happened. “An abundance of caution” has replaced “thoughts and prayers.”

We don’t know what to say, so we say the same sentiment again and again.

• • • 

As we live in “social distances” — we’ll return, again, to the Letter. In times of sickness and sadness, of grief and uncertainty, pen and paper are revived. A note, a letter, a scratch, a handwritten scrawl.

Wish you were here. Thinking of you. With love.

At the nursing home where I work, visitors have been banned to protect the vulnerable population from catching the coronavirus. Instead of face-to-face visits, we’re encouraging phone calls, text, skype, facetime, and my favorite, old-fashioned mail.

I’m reminded of my grandma, a tireless penpal. When I was a child, in the hospital for months at a time, my grandma sent letters and cards, each in her perfect penmanship, with a stick of gum taped inside.

Write me a letter — it’s infection-free, gluten-free, hypo-allergenic.

Send love with a stamp.

• • • 

We write poems.

We’ll fill this new dark space with fresh words that guide us through the lonely places.

Tucking In My Daughter In The Time of Coronoa Virus

And because she is wise

in the ways the young are,

my daughter, frightened and weeping,

asked between sobs

for a happy story.

There are times when a story

is the best remedy—

not because it takes us away

from the truth but because

it leads us closer in.

I told her the story of her birth,

and we laughed until

it was my turn to cry as I realized

no matter how scary the world,

what a miracle, the birth of a child.

Then, as fear made a sneaky return,

we whispered a list of things we

were grateful for, falling asleep with these

words on our breaths: cats, books, rivers,

home, family, soft blankets, music.

— Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

• • • 

Blogs are back!

Blogs had a heyday, 10 years past, when writers were fast & fevered. Post every week, we were told. Every day! Every hour! Post everything!

Then social media arrived, and the party fizzled. The writers slithered away to facebook and twitter, crafting pithy banter in 100 words or less. We got cute, clever, clipped. We got snarky and barky. Introvert was out, telling was in. We shared, shared, shared. We took photos, mostly of ourselves. We lost interest in the long read, the slow reveal.

But now, we’re hunkered at home. Time moves slower. The news scroll wears us down. We’ll want more. There, in our need, the lowly blog will emerge, like the high school friend with whom you fell out of touch, then reconnected and discovered a renewed appreciation. She’s so loyal, you’ll think, so thoughtful and kind. So ordinary.

But now, like staplers and sneakers, ordinary will feel just right.

I’m ordinary too. Stick with me. Established in 2008, this blog and me — we’re here for the duration.

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Thankful Thursday: You

The Seasons, an erasure poem by Drew Myron

The Seasons

When shadows fall

When a big wind blows

I took shelter in

the canopy of

you.

It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things and more. Some weeks are tougher than others, but every week offers some small thing that redeems and heals. 

What are you thankful for today?

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Finding Words

Play with words, I urge the writers gathered around the table. Eyes wander and pens hang listless from hands not yet gripped with drive. Attention puddles.

We’ve hit a rough patch at the nursing home. For two years, our motley group of elders has gathered to read, write, laugh and share. Before joining the group, most had not written much beyond shopping lists and infrequent letters, and yet they show up here eager and engaged as they read poems, share memories, and try new things.

But today, we’re not ourselves. We’re stuck in a rut.

It’s inevitable, really. It happens to every writer. You grow tired of your words, your self. You need shaken and stirred.

For many writers, daily life wears too familiar, and so nothing feels fresh. But for this group of seniors in their 70s, 80s, and 90s, who are grappling with various stages of dementia and numerous physical and mental challenges, writing at all is a terrific feat.

I have the words here, Betty says, flustered, all up here in my head, but they won't come out. 

So we ease the pressure. We get crafty. Elbow deep in magazines, markers, scissors, and glue, we create cut-up poems. And collage poems. Found poems and declarations. We’re mining splashy headlines and glossy photos. We’re conjuring mess and meaning, finding the words that escape us. 

Does it make sense? Does it matter? Is this poetry?

Yes, no, and sometimes. When we stop making sense, we allow fresh ideas to emerge and new paths to form. We are finding words beneath words, meaning beyond meaning.

That was fun, says Betty, buoyant after a slow start. I really liked that.

I nod, reminded once again of every writer’s wrangle: we are coaxing the words out of our minds and onto the page. With every jumble and confusion, we are stretching our understanding and expressing ourselves. In playing with words, we are claiming our creative lives.

A few days after our writing session, I find Betty visiting with a friend. She inches slow and deliberate along the hall. This one’s mine, she says, pride swelling as she shows her visitor the poem she made.

* Names and identifiers have been changed to protect privacy.

---

Love this line!

“How well do you really know your old high school friends?

I’m finding out now my old buddy is a creature of strange habits. Twice a day, Rausch does eighty push-ups and eighty sit-ups. He wears extremely tight, silky t-shirts. He picks his teeth with a pocketknife after meals and cleans his toes while he watches TV. He never seems to fully exhale. I imagine he has oxygen in his lungs from 1990.”

— Jess Walter
We Live in Water, a collection of stories

Has this happened to you — you read an excellent book, then race to find everything the author has written?

It’s a thrill, really, to find a book that you enjoy so much you don’t want it to end but also enjoy it so much you dash through with a fever of appreciation. Several years ago, I sped through Beautiful Ruins, a novel by Jess Walter, then proceeded to read through his others. In my fervor, I somehow missed We Live in Water, a 2013 gem of short stories set mostly in Spokane, Washington (the author’s hometown) and packed with struggling Pacific Northwest characters.

As usual, Walter’s prose shines with authentic people with real voice, giving each moment equal measures of wit, grit, grace and understanding.

I’ve done this with other writers — read one of their books and then promptly raced out to read their whole collection — including Carol Shields, Jean Thompson, Francine Prose, Sue Miller, Gail Godwin, Junot Díaz, Kaui Hart Hemmings, Jeffrey Eugenides . . .

How about you? What writers do you savor and can’t wait to read more?

* Note: Love this line is technically Love this passage, but I lean toward alliteration and rarely let truth get in the way of snap, crackle, pop.

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Thankful Thursday: Scrawl

What fortune — It’s Thankful Thursday and National Handwriting Day!

Yes, it’s a thing. Established in 1977 by the Writing Instrument Manufacturers Association, the occasion may have roots in self-interest  but it’s still a day that celebrates my favorite tools: pen and paper.

Early on, my literary life was formed with pen to paper: writing in loose looping curves across pages of my school-girl diary, then writing sloppy and free in college journals, and later as a fevered reporter recording every word in my own scrappy shorthand.

It’s handwriting that has always connected me to mind, body and heart.

Sure, laptops and phone notes are the modern tools. But it’s handwriting that has the power to capture and reveal the self, my self.

Natalie Goldberg says handwriting is crucial to creativity:

“A writing practice is simply picking up a pen — a fast-writing pen, preferably, since the mind is faster than the hand — and doing timed writing exercises. The idea is to keep your hand moving for, say, ten minutes, and don’t cross anything out, because that makes space for your inner editor to come in.” 

Handwriting brings my mother back, in a hurried scrawl of a recipe.

Handwriting provides lively tales of my grandmother’s life on a Washington wheat farm nearly 100 years ago.

Handwriting reminds me of my constant shopping list of chicken, cream, and gin.

In meetings, I am the only one taking notes. How do they retain important information, I wonder. That was always my trick; in college my study drill was to write and rewrite key information. Even now, when preparing for poetry reading or public speaking, I write and rewrite every single word.

Every day I write a to-do list and revel in the scratch-off.

Handwriting allows long letters to friends. In the slow-down of penmanship, however sloppy, I ease into the languid pace of contemplation.

Again and again, my refrain: How do I know what I feel until I write it out?

So yes, you bet, I celebrate National Handwriting Day. Today I wrote, by hand and heart, a dozen thank you notes. It was the best thing I did all day.

On this Thankful Thursday, I am thankful for the art and grace of handwriting. Write on!

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Fragment, Tangle, Hold

1.
I wake with a question:

Is this sadness or defeat?

And then:

What’s the difference?

2.
I remember imperfectly.

Sometimes you remember everything as it happens: a soft voice, rain pattering the night, how you squeezed me so hard I couldn’t breathe and wished to stay this way — breathless and held.

You swear it to memory, as if ordering a meal: I’ll take this and this and this.

But the mind is a faulty photograph. The image wears, blurs, goes away.

3.
Caught in a tangle of photos I am suddenly crying for a life I don’t remember living. And yet, there I am, a toddler, on a bicycle, in a field. Here, the farm, the trailer, in my mother’s arms, my sister’s gaze.

I am nostalgic for what I did not know and now hold with a vague but fierce tenderness. With a hand of protection, I am both guarding and letting go.

4.
Nostalgia says, I didn’t try. I didn’t try hard enough. I could have loved more, loved better. Nostalgia hums with fondness and with guilt, leaves you doubled over what was lost, but even worse, taunts with what you didn’t know you had.

5.
Once, I made a rule:

Don’t give in to nostalgia, I said, It’ll only strangle you.

I was young. I willed away wanting. I would not long for what I did not have. I would not want.

But now, years later, the photos I hold are thin and fading. Hopeful faces, holding in, holding on. With an examiner’s eye I see happiness, and my heart makes a declaration: This is how it was. This is truth.

6.
Is this sorrow
or a relapse of calm?

the body a loneliness     walking 

mirror of survival 

7.

Holding

I could imitate the thrash and flutter,

how you touched me like an error. I am pleading

my case and you are in the distance singing. 

There's something in the collage of resistance, 

how you finally let it move through. Please, I beg,

give me a way of moving, let my limbs know lyric. 

Make it rejoice, you say, 

       to hold a burden is the terror.

— Drew Myron

---

Good Books of 2019

Presents have been opened, rejoiced or returned, and the tree is now needles all over the floor. It’s time to look back at the year-in-books.

Frankly, I haven’t had a stellar year. Though I’m always reading, few books engaged my head & heart. I quit many (without guilt) and realized that, as with jeans, to get a good fit one must try, try, and try again. *

The upside is that my book malaise spurred me to explore. I reached beyond my routine of contemporary fiction and dabbled in mystery, fantasy, memoir and more. Some were thinkers, others sinkers, but I felt nicely stretched nonetheless.

Here, a few of the good books I read in 2019:

FICTION

The Middlesteins
by Jami Attenberg

Don’t judge a book by its cover (as I did, quickly dismissing this as adolescent drivel). This novel is original, funny, sad, sweet, with a spot-on grasp of family dynamics.

Chairs in the Rafters
by Julia Glass

A little-know novella by the bestselling author of Three Junes. As always, Glass delivers evocative prose with complex characters.

Educated
by Tara Westover

Yes, yes, everyone and their neighbor read, raved or loathed this memoir. This was such a page-turner I read it in one full swoop, glued to the couch for an entire day.

The Dry
by Jane Harper

This gripping mystery thriller is thick with atmosphere. An easy read, it was the ideal who-done-it to take me out of my head.

NON-FICTION

Don’t Let Me Be Lonely
by Claudia Rankine

Published in the George W era, this multi-genre inquiry is as politically and emotionally relevant as ever. Smart and incisive, with a seamless blend of poetry and prose, Rankine dives deep into culture, race, terrorism, depression, medication and media.

Stranger on a Train
by Jenny Diski

With wry and incisive prose, this travel memoir is less about landscape and more about people. In search of solitude, the British writer traverses the U.S. by train and finds herself drawn into the complex lives of ordinary strangers.

How the Light Gets In: Writing as a Spiritual Practice
by Pat Schneider

A warm and interior look into the motivations and circulations of the writing life. With her signature grace, Schneider invites readers to contemplate their lives and deepest questions through writing.

POETRY

If the House
by Molly Spencer

Layered, textured, rich and deep, this debut collection of poems is stunning. Poet David Biespiel sums it best: “Her portrait of life’s silences is fundamental and mysterious. Here is a riveting, deeply moving book of marriage and its dissolutions—between husband and wife, between a woman and her home, between dream and memory.”

The End of the West
by Michael Dickman

Dark, violent, conversational, essential, enigmatic — and beautiful.

Irksome Particulars
by Matt Cook

A pocket-size collection of irreverent prose poems, each no longer than a page and most just a few lines long, from the former poet laureate of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

FAVORITE BOOKSTORES

Where are you shopping? This year I was excited to discover and revisit these independent book shops:

Bart’s Books
Ojai, California

I stumbled (literally, I was on a walk and was looking for exercise, not books) when I found an outdoor bookstore. Open since 1964, Bart’s is the largest independently owned and operated outdoor bookstore in the U.S. With a selection of nearly one million new and used books, Bart’s is quirky, kooky and wonderfully bookish.

Klindt’s Booksellers
The Dalles, Oregon

Open since 1870, Klindt’s is the oldest bookstore in Oregon. With its original hardwood floors, cabinets and bookshelves, the narrow shop oozes history while packing in plenty of contemporary treasures. 

Powell’s City of Books
Portland, Oregon

Filling an entire city block in downtown Portland, since 1971 this is both mecca and disneyland for readers and writers. Not to see Powell’s is not to see Portland.

* I’m still searching for the perfect jeans.

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Thankful Thursday: Brightly Shining

The Week in Review 

I wore soft sweaters. Ate too many cookies. Meandered through days without demand.

An old woman who rarely speaks, stared, and asked: Do you like me?

Yes, I replied quickly, I love you. And felt the relief of a truth.

A leaden sky blurred time. I fought a sadness that did not take root.

Caught in holiday softening, I forgave grievances and felt goodwill.

Fall on your knees became my new refrain.

I was reminded of the real work ahead.

The Work of Christmas

When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with their flocks,
the work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the people,
to make music in the heart.

 — Howard Thurman

It's Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things and more. Some weeks are tougher than others, but every week offers some small thing that redeems and heals. What are you thankful for today?

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Grocery & Gift Lists

I carry a perpetual grocery list that gathers like a nest in every crevice of my life. Every week it’s a scratch of urgent needs: chicken, tonic, wine. Write, buy, repeat.

And in my head, I carry a gratitude list: a jumble of small, pressing appreciations.

Because attention attracts gratitude and gratitude expands joy, it's time for Thankful Thursday. This week I am thankful for:

Cuties
You know the sales pitch: small, sweet and easy to eat. Also, adorable in scale. These miniature oranges (technically mandarins) get me through these long winter days. Admittedly, they have a sordid backstory, and out of guilt I did take a long break. But here it is, holiday season, and I’m back on the Cuties.

Also: I’m thankful for this publication. Superb research, writing, and design.

Book Gifts
I’m not a great gift-giver. I labor over gift guides and scan every conversation for hints on what to buy that says, “How did you know?”

But I never know.

Because I love books, I assume everyone loves books, and that’s why each year I give books, books, books to family, friends, neighbors, strangers . . . But I’ve come to my senses (begrudgingly) and realized one person’s treasure is another’s homework assignment. My family groans silently with every literary gift.

Still, every lid has a pot and every book a reader. I can’t stop matching books to people. This year I’ve cut back on book gifts — but I did find an exact right match with this book and this book and this book.

Also, I’ll include this caveat: You don’t like the book? Pass it on. Re-gifting is allowed and encouraged.

Grandma, the movie
The best movies are the ones you don’t even know you want to see. This week I stumbled into a gem: Grandma, a dramedy with sharp writing and great acting from Lily Tomlin and Julia Garner. Released in 2015, it’s now on Amazon.

A friend sends a poem
This week a friend sent me this poem. A poem is a gentle ‘thinking of you’, and isn’t that the best gift of all?

Between Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice, Today

I read a Korean poem

with the line “Today you are the youngest

you will ever be.” Today I am the oldest

I have been. Today we drink

buckwheat tea. Today I have heat

in my apartment. Today I think

about the word chada in Korean.

It means cold. It means to be filled with.

It means to kick. To wear. Today we’re worn.

Today you wear the cold. Your chilled skin.

My heart kicks on my skin. Someone said

winter has broken his windows. The heat inside

and the cold outside sent lightning across glass.

Today my heart wears you like curtains. Today

it fills with you. The window in my room

is full of leaves ready to fall. Chada, you say. It’s tea.

We drink. It is cold outside.

— Emily Jungmin Yoon

It’s Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, poems, and more. What are you thankful for today?

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Love this line (and entire book)!

“If you write the truth, you will change the world.

If you write privately, you change your own inner world,

and that changes the outer world.

If you write publicly, you give voice to what is,

and that assists what is becoming.

If you help someone else to write the truth,

you may not live long enough to know it,

but you will have changed the world.”

— an excerpt from How The Light Gets In: Writing As A Spiritual Practice by Pat Schneider

Over the years I’ve read a great many “how-to” books on writing and the creative process. I devour the really good ones and press them eagerly into your hands: Writing Down the Bones and Poemcrazy and In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet’s Portable Workshop.

But this one has worked another sort of magic that feels both affirming ( I do that!) and inspiring (I feel that too!). This dense treasure is not new nor flashy. Instead, it’s a deep and thoughtful reflection of writing and the writing life, penned by the poet who pioneered Amherst Writers, a writing workshop method that believes every person is a writer, and every writer deserves a safe environment in which to experiment (I agree!).

In reading and re-reading How the Light Gets In, I feel seen, understood, and a little less alone in the writing life. If I could press this book into your hands, I would, I would, I would.

Waving: A Day of Veterans

God bless America, says the elderly man sitting beside me.

And for a moment, I feel what he might mean. A wash of nostalgia, sentimentality and weight. Is this how patriotism feels?

I’m conflicted about war memorials, Love it or Leave It bumper stickers, and the red, white & blue. Even the holidays— Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Veteran’s Day — make me uneasy. Too much macho, testosterone, blow-‘em-up-and-boast-about-it.

I’m a pacifist. A lover, not a fighter. I want to make art, not war. I could be a Quaker.

Yes, yes, I’m happy to live in the land of the free. I’m not ungrateful. I recognize sacrifice. I married a veteran, and yet, I bristle at these glorifications masked as honor.

But here I am, on a bus in a parade, filled with elderly men who have served in the Navy, Army, Marines. The street is lined with people of all ages, smiling, holding flags, and waving at us. As we drive past, a woman puts her hand to her heart. A man mouths thank you. A group of children hold a banner they made: We love you, Veterans!

The heart swells. Who wouldn’t like this?

***

People say, Thank you for your service. I can’t say what I don’t fully grasp, and instead I ask: What was it like?

It was fun, says John.

My heart sinks. Surely I misheard. I’m expecting honor, duty, sacrifice. He’s 90, he didn’t mean it, he misunderstood. It’s not suppose to be adrenaline and exuberance. But war, like life, is rarely lived in black and white. Fun could mean camaraderie, could mean purpose, could mean belonging. Fun could mean young.

***

Inside the bus, the radio plays Anchors Away and we are lifted in an easy joy. Our group, in their 70s, 80s and 90s, is all smiles.

Look, I say, the children are waving to you. And John, his spine bent in such a severe curve he can hardly look up, even he is waving.

Isn’t that something, he says, as his frail hand rises to acknowledge the praise, waving and waving. All these people out here for us.

***

Photographing the Suddenly Dead (an excerpt)

We no longer have to name
the sins that we are guilty of.
The evidence for every crime
exists. What one
must always answer for
is not what has been done, but
for the weight of what remains
as residue—every effort
must be made to scrub away
the stain we’ve made on time.

— Kevin Powers
from Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting 

* Names and identifiers have been changed to protect privacy.

---

Weigh Station

1.
It can break your heart how much the smallest moment can matter. 

At the nursing home, I stop to chat with Grace. When I give a bright hello she lights up as if she’s been waiting all day for someone to see her. We talk a bit but the conversation gets rocky as she struggles to find words and a sense of time. We traverse a trail —  a jumble of cars, a dog, her hair, the pain of a recently trimmed toenail.  

I nod along. I've learned to let the conversation wander between past and present. It doesn't matter if the story makes sense, if it's true, if it's today or 20 years ago, just that there's comfort in the telling.

 Like a poem, we're not looking for fact. We want music, mood, connection. 

2.
A woman visiting her mother overhears our conversation.

I don't know how you do it, she says to me.

Well, I say, shrugging, I'm not a nurse. They do the hard work. 

I tell myself I'm removed. That I feel what the nurses can't, because distance is a form of self-preservation. Like I'm compensating. 

 But it’s not true; we’re all carrying an invisible weight.

3.
Who can describe the weight of love —

late we learn how heavy,

when grief is the flood we float above

and love is the break in the levee.

 — excerpt from Weight, by Pat Schneider 

4.
Years ago I was given a card with a simple message: Live your poem.

I didn't know what it meant, but liked how it felt. 

I have that same feeling today, talking with Grace, who is pleasantly confused. And Addie, who is terrified until you soothe with soft words, your hand in hers. Or Manny with the vacant eyes. Or Florence who sings through her confusion, and Violet who has lost speech but still lifts her brows in animation.

These small moments of pause, of dark and light, I don't know what it means, or if it means anything at all. But I know how it feels — quiet, present, full — like a prayer, like a poem. Like one very small thing of value, of weight. 

5.
Presence, writes Maria Popova, is far more intricate and rewarding an art than productivity.

6.
There is, of course, a desire to fix. But most times there is no fix, or none of which I am able. I am weighted with the inability to do anything.  I offer no tangible goods. Hold little value, have no weight. 

And so, I am a container that accepts, absorbs, fills.

7.
My husband, a good and hardworking man, is a fixer. Houses, cars, hearts — he alters, mends, smooths, and shapes. Everything can be made better, whole. 

I envy his urgency and action. With each sad story I bend to hear, my cup fills and overflows, and I think it would be better if I could just act: fix something. 

Listening doesn't cure a stroke, restore vision, or heal a break. Empathy is not medicine, and in these dim days my happy hellos can ring hollow. I can't do anything but hold a mood or a moment, and wonder, then, how something so small can weigh so much?

* Names and identifiers have been changed to protect privacy.

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September: Give me your hum

1.
I’m writing postcards to summer:  Wish you were here. Miss you already. Come back soon. 

This is metaphor. And not. For years I’ve fought this season with the same refrain: not ready, not ready, not ready.

2.
And all at once, summer collapsed into fall, wrote Oscar Wilde.

3.
 It's the sharp shadows of September that pull me down, how the light both leans in and tilts away from beauty. Into these shortened days, dampness moves too quickly.

4.
It's always too soon. I'm never ready. If autumn is the season of letting go — heat, light, leaves — then summer is the blast of energy I briefly harness and just as my trust reaches full speed, summer falters and slips away.

5.
I married in September, and spent Septembers at a high mountain lake where I learned to embrace the language of change: cloister, clarity, crystalline, warmth, nourish, now.

I know autumn brings good things, but slowly, quietly, and with shadows of doubt.

6.
Now I am older and see everything as it was, and as it wasn't.

7.
Happiness is just the patina of memory. Even patina — a soft wash of time and wear — is cousin to sepia, which surely belongs to September.  

Was I born longing? It's melancholy I know best.

Invocation At The End of Summer

I call on the spirit of summer’s end,  
of tangled roots and the earth’s 
mold. Give me your hum.                               

I call on things that thrive in byways—
snakeroot, aster, dock. The teasel 
that pricks, the pod that slips away. 

 Give me light, charged with a flush 
of quick shadows—the sun stretched
flat across the grass, sullen, satisfied.

Let me feast on the overripeness of things,
the spice of apple that dazzles wasps 
and spins deer in drunken staggers
over the field. Give me your heat.

I call on things that sweeten and fall— 
butternut, pippin, the fluttering hearts
of rosebud—the luscious drip of evening,

 a shuddering of birds rising up 
and settling, the last secrets of the katydid.

 Let me put my head among the leaves. 
Let me listen.

— Shirley McPhillips
from Acrylic Angel of Fate

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Thankful Thursday: Terroir

In the vineyard

mahogany vines hang heavy 

against a wide blue sky

the day spreads a feast     just for us

say       yes     now

 
drink the mystery 

of cedar and soil

 
taste the dark gloss 

of plump summer fruit

 
know the terrain 

of this generous world 

— Drew Myron
from Thin Skin

Please join me for Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things and more. Joy expands and contracts in direct relation to our sense of gratitude.

What are you thankful for today? What makes your world expand?

Note: Terroir - noun - ter·​roir
The combination of factors, including soil, climate, and sunlight, that gives wine grapes [ and people ] their distinctive character.

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On Sunday Sadness

Be Still, an erasure poem by Drew Myron

Wasn’t it a great weekend, full of sunshine and good times, friends and fun? Yes, for me also.

But then Sunday evening arrives and a sadness creeps in. Always something lonely about a Sunday night (or a Monday holiday that feels like a Sunday).

It’s not just me. Go ahead, google “Sunday sadness” and see the pages pile up.

Sunday sadness is so common it’s made the Urban Dictionary: “a feeling of fatigue, depression or anxiety felt on Sunday.”

The quasi-authority on modern life, Real Simple, backs this up: “Even after the best of weekends (or especially after the best of weekends), there’s a cloud that descends.”

This vague edgy-melancholic state is more than dread for the workweek ahead (I like my job! I love structure!). This is not depression, but more of an existential fugue, a spiritual restlessness, a distant cousin to malaise.

On Sunday nights, I find myself reading poems and writing long searching letters to faraway friends. I try to write my own poems but my thoughts are scattered, too loose to pin, too pinned to let loose.

Given that this day is widely set aside for spiritual nourishment, maybe this sadness is God giving a nudge. But instead of encouraged, I feel the familiar gnaw of church and faith: ache and sadness, relief and weight.

Late Meditation (excerpt)

Do you think His arms
are going to make
a cradle

for your head

so you can finally
fall asleep?

The yellow crocus just outside the front door is not a miracle of light

But pretty close
in its papery
stillness

The only color in the entire yard

We are trying
very hard

to be alone

— Michael Dickman
The End of the West

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Thankful Thursday: Abundance

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

On this Thankful Thursday, I am flush with abundance.

And neighbors. And fresh food. And kindness.

My neighbor, whom I don’t know well, brings me a bag of peaches.

And a bag of tomatoes the next week.

And another bag last week.

Before she shared her garden bounty, we would occasionally wave at each other from across the street. Now, I’m eager to see her cheery face, and we cross the road to chat. We might even be friends.

Another neighbor, whom I have shared only waves from the car, brings a bag of apples. The tree is really producing, he says, I can’t keep up.

I make an apple pie. A few days later, he calls to me. Want some more? Yes, I say, yes!

All week I feel neighborly and good-natured. I am full of fresh food, and filled with an abundance that swells from kindness. How simple this feeling, yet how very grand.

A Song for Merry Harvest

Bring forth the harp, and let us sweep its fullest, loudest string.
The bee below, the bird above, are teaching us to sing
A song for merry harvest; and the one who will not bear
His grateful part partakes a boon he ill deserves to share.
The grasshopper is pouring forth his quick and trembling notes;
The laughter of the gleaner’s child, the heart’s own music floats.
Up! up! I say, a roundelay from every voice that lives
Should welcome merry harvest, and bless the God that gives.

The buoyant soul that loves the bowl may see the dark grapes shine,
And gems of melting ruby deck the ringlets of the vine;
Who prizes more the foaming ale may gaze upon the plain,
And feast his eye with yellow hops and sheets of bearded grain;
The kindly one whose bosom aches to see a dog unfed
May bend the knee in thanks to see the ample promised bread.
Awake, then, all! ’tis Nature’s call, and every voice that lives
Shall welcome merry harvest, and bless the God that gives.

— Eliza Cook, 1818-1889

Known as a poet of the working class, Eliza Cook wrote poems that advocated for political freedom for women and addressed questions of class and social justice, according to the Academy of American Poets. Despite her popularity, she was criticized for the ways in which she bucked gender conventions in both her writing and her life; Cook wore male clothing and had a relationship with American actress Charlotte Cushman, to whom she addressed a number of her poems.

It's Thankful Thursday. Joy expands and contracts in direct relation to our sense of gratitude. What are you thankful for today? A person, a place, a possession? A story, a song, a poem? What makes your world expand?

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Note to (blurry) self

Reminder, a series by Drew Myron

This is no. 11 in a series of reminders that serve as notes and poems to myself — and now you. Is your head as crowded as mine? It’s okay, jot a note and take a rest.

You don’t have to linger  

 in a loneliness that makes you blurry.      

 You can fill in blanks           make up a story   

sound out the silence with something 

more than understanding, 

stir the understanding with something more than tears, 

stir the tears with something more than surrender.  

 
In the math of wanting, 

you can contradict your self 

           praise the grace of quiet things

  the malignant sadness and 

surprising sweetness of 

                                                         every day.

— Drew Myron

Love This Line: "We pretend . . . "

“We pretend to want things we don't want so nobody can see us not getting what we need.”

— Lisa Taddeo, author of Three Women

Don’t judge a book by its cover, they say, but even more pressing is don’t judge a book by its marketing campaign.

Three Women has been billed as a “groundbreaking portrait of erotic longing in today’s America.” But that wasn’t my experience. Rather than a comprehensive examination of female desire, this work of literary nonfiction offers a deep and engaging view of three complex and frayed women. Taddeo is a journalist who writes like a poet, telling stories with extraordinary empathy and nuance.

This book wasn’t what it said it would be — it was better.

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Thankful Thursday: Catalog of Cures

Writer tries drawing, with help from Lynda Barry and Writing the Unthinkable.

Catalog of Cures

Wild sweetpeas grow along abandoned curbs

At 4am, roused by birdsong

Try to draw, try to sing, try a new you

Along a chain link fence, a clutch of roses grow in a perfect bouquet 

In the distance you see a runner gliding, as if weightless,
as if ease is for anyone who believes in light

A friend brings bubbles

A thrush of balsam root on a slope

The ting ting ting of ice in a glass

I find a recipe in my mother's scrawl 

The letter we keep writing ourselves 

Twilight, dusk, dawn — the hush of changing light

Ghosts fade, and memories are made and remade
What we recall depends on us

We would give anything for what we have, writes Tony

Some days in summer, when you are tired and aching
and if you are lucky and looking 

the world offers to you a cascade of cures 

— Drew Myron

It’s Thankful Thursday. Please join me in a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things & more. From the small to the immense, the world contracts and expands in relation to our gratitude. What are you thankful for today?

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