Tag Archives: Poetry

In Memoriam: Seamus Heaney, and Other Writers we Lost in 2013

29 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by in The Writing Life

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A prized possession: a first-edition copy of Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney's poetry, inscribed to me.

A  first-edition copy of the Nobel laureate’s poetry, inscribed to me: “To Marci—well met in Oberlin. Seamus Heaney”

I thought about writing the standard New Year’s Eve fare this year, illustrated with balloons and noisemakers, and festooned with streamers of resolutions. In a contemplative mood, I even toyed with the idea of riffing on the word “resolution” to see where the associations might take me. (You know: “I’m a writer. I resolve to write every day without fail.” That sort of thing.) But my contemplative mood took an unexpected turn. I pulled this copy of Seamus Heaney’s poems down from my shelf, and began thinking about the writers we lost this past year.

Seamus Heaney, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995, died on August 30. I met him in the late 1980s; he had come to present a lecture and reading at Oberlin College, where I was a student majoring in English. (A “specialization” within the major allowed me to take creative writing workshops, where I could concentrate on my own poetry.) Members of the English and creative writing faculties were entertaining the “greatest Irish poet since Yeats” at a dinner preceding his lecture. To my astonishment and eternal gratitude, my poetry professor invited me to join them. I was the only student there.

What do I remember of that dinner? There were perhaps six of us, seated at a round table in a windowed corner of the Oberlin Inn. I remember drinking a glass of white wine with whatever it was that I ate. Seamus Heaney regaled us with wonderful stories. Another of my professors talked about reading Danté in the Italian with an esteemed emeritus.

You have to remember: I was an older student, probably 31 or 32. My parents never went to college. I hadn’t even read an English translation of Danté yet. But one thing was clear to me: I had come a long way from the darkened movie theater where I saw Educating Rita and resolved to return to school.

My professor had told Seamus Heaney something of my story: married student with a young son, commuting every day to classes from a neighboring town, writing poetry that they all thought showed promise. I know this because at the book signing following the lecture, the greatest Irish poet since Yeats told me. “I think what you’re doing is wonderful,” he said. And then he signed two books for me.

Rest in peace, Seamus Heaney. I hope you’re enjoying many fine meals in the sweet hereafter, and that Yeats and Danté are among your table companions.

In Memoriam

Chinua Achebe, Nigerian author

Iain Banks, Scottish writer

Dr. Joyce Brothers, psychologist and author

Carolyn Cassady, writer

Tom Clancy, best-selling military novelist

Janet Dailey, romance writer

Roger Ebert, film critic and journalist

Syd Field, author of books on screenwriting

Rev. Andrew Greeley, best-selling author and columnist

Marcella Hazan, cookbook author

Seamus Heaney, Irish poet, Nobel Laureate

Oscar Hijuelos, Pulitzer Prize winning Cuban-American novelist

Peter Kaplan, editor, New York Observer

Elmore Leonard, best-selling crime novelist

Doris Lessing, novelist, essayist, poet, Nobel Laureate

Albert Murray, novelist and critic

Alvaro Mutis, Columbian writer and poet

Ahmed Fouad Negm, Egyptian poet

Barbara Park, children’s book author

Ida Pollock, romance novelist

Lou Reed, songwriter, singer, musician

Andre Schiffrin, editor

Mary Thom, feminist, writer, editor

Ned Vizzini, YA author

Bernard Waber, children’s author

Colin Wilson, British author

Moving to Encourage Good Fortune

23 Wednesday Jan 2013

Posted by in Transitions

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MorgueFile Image

MorgueFile Image

You’d be forgiven for thinking I’ve fallen off the map. I haven’t been blogging much lately because my life is about to change in a whopping big way. After two-and-a-half years in the fascinating city of Richmond, Virginia, my husband and I are preparing for our return to Northeast Ohio. Or, as I like to call it, the Land Where I Met the Love of my Life.

You’d be right in thinking: “My goodness! Didn’t she just uproot herself to move from Ohio to Virginia? I remember reading all about it on her blog.”

Well yes. Welcome to life in the 21st-century, where job changes occur with greater frequency than they did in our parents’ generation. My husband’s new job—a really terrific one—is the magnet pulling us back, and it’s a good move for many reasons, although we’ll discuss the frigid climate another time. My son is getting married this fall, John’s oldest son is receiving his doctoral degree in May, and we will be much closer to his younger boy. Our boys, I should say. Our sons. None of this “his” or “mine.” John and I believe that our blended family feels very much like an “ours,” although, sometimes, old speech habits are slow to catch up with the heart.

As for myself and this move? Well, I can write and blog anywhere—from the top of Mount Rainier, if I have to—as long as there’s Internet access and I don’t have to climb to get there.

But for now, I’m here, chipping away at the slow deconstruction of my tiny office in our Richmond townhouse. I’ve just removed the artifacts and “familiars” that adorn my bulletin board, and at present I have on my desk a great treasure. It is a poem, yellowed with age and riddled with pinholes. I will carefully tuck it away in a file for the move to Ohio, where it will resume its rightful place—I want to say like a talisman, but that’s not quite right and you’ll see why in a moment—in my new office. I also want to say I hope it will bring me luck, but again—habits of speech tend not to catch up with the heart. The poem is about anti-luck, or, as the late American poet William Stafford called it,

The Little Ways that Encourage Good Fortune

Wisdom is having things right in your life
and knowing why.
If you do not have things right in your life,
you will simply be overwhelmed.
You may be heroic, but you will not be wise.
If you have things right in your life, and you
do not know why, you are just lucky,
And you will not move in the little ways that
encourage good fortune.
The saddest of all are those who are not right
in their own lives who are acting to make
things right for others.
They act only from the self, and that
self will never be right;
No luck, no help, no wisdom.

—William Stafford
(1914-1993)
©  1960, 1998 The Estate of William Stafford
Used with Permission of the Executor, Kim Stafford

When I emailed the poet’s son, Kim Stafford, asking for permission to reproduce this gem of a poem, I wrote that this is likely to be one of the poems I’d like read at my funeral. His reply?

“Perhaps the poem is more useful in the midst of life, when one can act so as to encourage the little ways …?”

And of course it is, which is why I’m sharing it with you here, thanks to Kim Stafford’s good offices, and why I’ve always kept it close to my heart, where old speech habits—even reflexively wishing someone good luck—sometimes lag behind.

Kim also shared something his father once said: “I must be willingly fallible to deserve a place in the realm where miracles happen.”

So I won’t wish good luck for myself, or for my husband or our boys. I shall will myself—and them—to be fallible in order to reside in the realm where miracles happen.

I wish that for you, too.

Note: Kim Stafford is an associate professor at the Lewis & Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling in Portland, Oregon, where he directs the Northwest Writing Institute. He tells me that he and his colleagues are at work planning “The William Stafford Centennial, 2014: 100 Years of Poetry and Peace.”

On Waking to a New Year Without Revelry

01 Tuesday Jan 2013

Posted by in Special Events, Transitions

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Calendarcropped2

MorgueFile image

Last night at midnight a New Year dawned,
But what did I do? I stretched and yawned.
For I was asleep, warmly snug in my bed
While visions of calendars danced in my head.

It was not a good year, two thousand and twelve,
And I’m glad to leave it behind on the shelf
With all of its storms and horror and grief
That threatened to shake my firmest beliefs.

I awoke to the news—not done in a jiff—
That our Senate averted the dread fiscal cliff.
All that remains is to rally the House.
Will they do the right thing? Or grumble and grouse?

I’m so weary of fussing and fighting, my friends.
Can’t we all get along? Can’t we all make amends?
Let this be the year we do the right thing
For our future, our children, and all living things.

Greetings, GenFab Friends!

20 Thursday Dec 2012

Posted by in Humor Me, Indulgences, Special Events, The Life Poetic

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MorgueFile photo

MorgueFile photo

In the holiday season, in days of yore,
Scribe Roger Angell his feelings did pour.
On New Yorker’s back pages, right at the end,
Were yuletide wishes he called ‘Greetings, friends!’

To bold-faced names and celebs aplenty,
Angell rhymed his tidings in couplets steady.
And so it is in that spirit this year,
I do the same, so all lend an ear!

To the bloggers I read who are known as GenFab
(They’ve the gift of the pen and the gift of the gab),
I fill stockings chock-full of dreamings galore
That start at the ceiling and stream to the floor.

To the founding trio—Greenthal, Jeffreys, and Parris—
I send jewels and baubles befitting an heiress.
To the duo known widely as Grown and Flown—
I give pricey and fragrant eau de cologne.

There are other pairs, like the sisters Irving
So to Karen and Wendy I present two gold rings.
And to Maryl and Caryl of Second Lives Club,
Let’s create a great feast; end it with syllabub!

But what is that noise? That great big BOOM-BOOM?
It’s the BOOMBox Network and they’re working the room!
To Bradshaw and Kovacs and Van Petegem,
I send iPhones with apps for ad stratagems.

And off at HuffPost where bloggers do frolic,
There’s Lois Alter Mark and Darryle Pollack!
And here to the left is Nancy Wurtzel,
With Julie Danis and Donna Highfill!

Oh what shall we give HP writers like these—
So smart and so quick as to be the bees knees?
A home by the sea to vacation in Spain,
And designer umbrellas in case it should rain.

But look over there, on the Next Avenue—
It’s Linda Bernstein! Hello! Bienvenue!
What would be right for this media maven?
We’ll deed her a Caribbean tax-free haven.

And while on the topic of real estate,
A house for N. Hill, with a very grand gate.
Recreational grounds for Ms. Jean Parks.
For PK Fields—all the Ozarks.

We cannot neglect Kay Lynn Akers,
To her we give mansions in Heights known as Shaker.
And lest we forget Robin Meadow Dinsmore
Here are keys to a cottage by the seashore.

To the Wolf called Big Little, a red riding hood.
And to Wolff, Linda Maltz, some Norwegian wood.
For Lisa Carpenter, the tools that she needs,
And for Nina Knox, some gold shiny beads.

There’s no therapy quite like retail,
So a flagship store goes to Beverly Diehl.
And Debi Aronson Pfitzenmaier,
Gets a personal shopper and personal buyer.

Still have shopping to do? Go and see Joy Weese Moll.
She’s getting a high-end luxury mall.
It’s all quite posh and there’s never a crowd
There’s even a spa for Connie McLeod.

For Sarah Chesko and Cathy Chester,
A titan of Wall Street to have as investor.
And Jacqueline Tierney De Muro
Gets an ivory inlaid mahogany bureau.

Think life is Better After 50?
Then tell Felice Shapiro that you think she’s nifty.
And please don’t forget Mindy Klapper Trotta—
Bake them a cheesecake made with ricotta.

Save some for their own Ronna Benjamin,
(Or would she like boots made out of snakeskin?)
For Molly Campbell and Lib Aubuchon,
We give each a chair with a plush ottoman.

For Barbara Albright and Jo Heroux,
We’ll throw a big shindig with great barbecue.
To Haralee Weintraub and Janie Emaus,
Ad-free Words With Friends that aren’t blasphemous.

On Jennifer Comet, on Wagner, on Blitzen!
On Amy Noggle, on Ruhlin—on Vixen!
Open your socks by the chimney with care—
They contain fine wine and imported Gruyère.

To cineastes Flournoy and Bradley Colleary,
We give options and meetings with Dennis Leary.
Helene Cohen Bludman gets signed first editions.
Jessica Bern gets successful auditions.

A collection of art for Ann Dunnewold.
For Lori Jo Vest, in case she gets cold,
A hat and a scarf and a coat of faux mink
For Maddie Kertay,
An ice-skating rink.

Who would like chocolate truffles from Belgium?
Lynn Forbes, Susan Williams, Walker Thornton—come get ‘em!
Denise Danches Fisher shall have priceless etchings.
Mary Anne Tuggle Payne gets Paul Klee’s sketchings.

For Midlife Bloggers’ Jane Gassner
A leather portfolio with jeweled fasteners.
For Laura Lee Carter, midlife crisis guru,
An all-expense paid trip to Peru.

To the spiritual Lori Lavender Luz
A new yoga wardrobe. Why? Just because!
And to Cheryl Pallant, the dancer so rare,
A trip back in time to partner Astaire.

Caryn Payzant, Kim Phillips, and Jodi Okun
Get to boogie with Springsteen and sing “Born to Run.”
To Judy Krell Freedman and Pauline Gaines,
Strands of fine diamonds on silvery chains.

To Patricia Patton and Patricia Petro,
Unlimited flights in and out of Heathrow.
She’s far too polite to ask, “Whatcha bring us?”
She was raised right, Bonnie Petrie Dingus.

To her we bequeath a wishing well.
And another just like it to Sara Cornell.
Florinda Lantos Pendley Vasquez
Gets whatever she wants. Sez who? I sez!

Daphne Palmer Romero, what do you say
To a comedy session with Tina Fey?
Lori Ann Lothian of Elephant Journal
Gets a date with a five-star general or colonel.

To Tammy Gordon and Missy Lawler:
A fully equipped fishing trawler.
Complete with a crew (or at least a sailor)
To teach nautical stuff to Karen Williams Taylor.

To Susan Keats and Cindi Moomettes,
Platinum combs and ruby barrettes.
To Sweeties Teamer Wendy Limauge,
Season Patriots tickets, with seats in the loge.

A language course for Ellen Dolgen
Taught by a bona fide Parisienne.
And last but not least, exotic ports of call
To Karen Espensen Sandoval.

My fear is I might have left someone off,
If your name’s not been spotted, well, tell me off!
It’s hard to keep track of so many bloggers,
There are more of them than Alaskan loggers!

For the writers I know and the ones I’ve not met
There are musical duos and string quartets.
And to readers of mine who have followed me here,
Thank you for indulging my GenFab cheer.

To Marci, On Your 20th Birthday

05 Monday Nov 2012

Posted by in The Writing Life, Transitions

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Nothing but myself?….My selves.
After so long, this answer.
As if I had always known
I steer the boat in, simply.

— from “Integrity” by Adrienne Rich

Marci, you don’t know me. I’m your 56-year-old self. Or maybe you do know me a little—after all, we’re part of the same person.

There’s so much I wish I could tell you on this, your 20th birthday. I wish I could prepare you for what’s to come. Actually, perhaps you don’t need my help; in retrospect, I—I mean we—handled some of the difficult things quite well. Interestingly, it was often the little things that tripped us up.

Right now you are at cross-purposes with yourself. You are working full-time as a legal secretary when so many others from high school are away at college. In fact, you are working too hard; you’re also putting in a lot of part-time hours at Casual Corner, that new retail store at the mall. I know, I know—the 20% discount is wonderful. And once a fashionista, always a fashionista. But I wish you were in a position to take an extra night class at the community college, instead of working two jobs. I know you need the money; you’re helping our mother, with whom you still live—often at each other’s throats.

It will take you many years to understand why she was so fearful and distrustful of life, and why her fears influenced many of the decisions we would make. Her life will be instructive, though: it will teach you what the poet Adrienne Rich will, in just a few years, call a “wild patience.” You must trust me on this.

You haven’t discovered Adrienne Rich yet, but you will. In fact, I’d advise you to seek her out now—don’t wait until you’re at Oberlin College. Yes, you’ll get there. It will take a while, but you’ll do it.

Right now you’re taking two classes—one in English composition, the other in journalism. You think you want to be a writer. You should hold on more tightly to this dream. I know that if I encourage you to change even the smallest thing about your life—to decide just one thing differently—the course of our lives will change. I’m not sure I want you to do that, because I’m coming from a very good place. There has been more sweet than sour in our lives—it has been a good life. No, what I would like you to do is believe in yourself more.

I remember how your thinking used to go:

Fulfilling, exciting careers are for other people, not for me. It’s useless to dream that I’ll be something more than I am, or do something bigger with my life; I’m destined to live in this town forever.

Marci, if you only knew. Please don’t dismiss your dream. Hold on to it. I cannot lie to you: although your dream will indeed be deferred, your “wild patience” will take you far; it will inspire you to pursue your dream again. You will finish college. You will write. You will also marry, and become a mother to a wonderful baby boy.

You will not remain married, but you will discover a strength you didn’t believe you had by living on your own for the first time in your life. You will have a career you never thought possible. You will meet a new man, fall in love, and marry again.

I don’t know if I should tell you any more—I especially don’t know if I should tell you about the bad things that will happen—the sour that seems to always accompany the sweet. Let me just go back to that idea of a wild patience: it will give you strength. It will fill you with passion and resolve. It will be your salvation.

And don’t worry: I’ll be in the boat with you. We’ll steer it in to shore together.

NOTES: The idea of writing to my 20-year-old self came from Chloe of the Mountain, founder of a wonderful blogging network to which I belong called “Generation Fabulous”  (GenFab for short). Today, GenFab started something known as a “blog hop.” We’re all writing to our younger selves and sharing the collective wisdom. You can read the other posts on this topic by clicking this link.

Marci Rich is not related to the late poet Adrienne Rich.

Still Life With Bone Scan

27 Sunday Nov 2011

Posted by in The Life Poetic

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Négatif

Image via Wikipedia

Still Life with Bone Scan

She is smaller than
before.
Tomorrow
she’ll be smaller still,
aging into herself,
erasing her self.

The doctor’s
at the door,
in his hands, an analog
of her.
It’s smaller still—
this negative image,
this paper doll—
her skull coyly tilted
to one side, defenseless,
her arms stretched wide.

Hiding, the tumor—
benign but not benevolent—
in what he called
“a symbiotic kinship
with the brain.”

How far removed, this
milky miniature, this flattened
pattern of a mother?
How far removed
from she who strode
through rooms in
Sicilian joy or aggravation,

who posed on the DeSoto’s hood—
perfectly manicured and coiffed—
an elegant arm draped
over my father’s shoulder,
smiling at the camera?

Sorrowful mother,
small amid the chalky sheets,
(the wires translating
each heartbeat onto a screen,
yet another analog)

the fact of her life
as lines on a graph.

The Writer’s Prayer

19 Saturday Nov 2011

Posted by in The Writing Life

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The Writer’s Prayer
With apologies to St. Luke and St. Matthew

Our muse, who art within us,
Hallowed be thy flame.
Thy freedom come,
Thy quill be done—
No dearth like the other night at seven.
Give us this day our daily “said,”
And forgive us our frets,
As we forgive those fretters within us.
Lead us not into frustration,
But deliver us from drivel
Now, and at each hour and breath,
Amen.

—Marci Rich

Today is the 19th day in a row that I’ve written and posted to my blog and cross-posted on BlogHer, part of the commitment I made to the glorious madness known as National Blog Posting Month, or NaBloPoMo. The other day, while speeding through the BlogHer site to post my essay, I spotted a photograph on a syndicated NaBloPoMo post that pretty much sums up what it’s like to write in such a frenzied blur. The writer illustrated her essay with a photo of her laptop.

Big deal, you say? It was perched on the toilet.

For obsessives—and writers are nothing if not obsessive—this image is gold.

Dawn’s post inspired me to write about NaBloPoMo again. The challenge served as my subject twice: when I wrote and posted my very first NaBloPoMo submission, way back in the dark ages of November 1, and the day after, when I learned that the editors at BlogHer had syndicated it, thus giving me a huge boost of energy from which to tap. Now, 19 days later, we’re all more than halfway home and more than a little exhausted.

One of the added values of NaBloPoMo is the demand that it makes on one’s discipline as a writer. Posting an essay every day for 30 days straight yields such a prolific output as to turn everyone participating into the Joyce Carol Oates of blogging. I’ve never written so much of my own work at such a consistent pace in my life. And I’m 55. That’s a long time. (I really don’t count my professional output from years spent writing for other people and organizations.)

A word about that. Years ago, when I first began life as a salaried writer, a lovely author named Diane Vreuls said to me, “Be careful. Pay the bills, but try to avoid jobs that have you write. It can get in the way.”

It did. I churned out press releases, faculty bios, tip-sheets, magazine articles, and—with the advent of the Internet, web stories. But I did little to no writing of my own. The exhaustion that sets in from being creative for hire while balancing home and family left me dry. And I missed the poet I used to be.

Majoring in English with a creative writing emphasis as a non-traditional student at Oberlin College, I had studied with Diane’s husband, the poet, translator, and literary editor Stuart Friebert. My particular focus was poetry, and I was required to present a poem for critique in Stuart’s poetry workshop every week. He used to quote Grace Paley to us: “A poem a day keeps the prose doctor away.”

Those days of “a poem a day”—from around 1987 to 1991—represent the last time I experienced such prolonged outbursts of creativity. Until, that is, this month. So thank you, NaBloPoMo, for reminding me (and I do need reminding, for life gets in the way) that there’s a reason for writing every day. It’s no longer because I “have to” in the assignment-sense; it’s because I have to, as in “I need to.” As in the survival sense.

Note: In a metanarrative kinda way, if you link to Diane’s name in this post, you’ll be taken to an article I wrote about her on the occasion of her retirement from the faculty at Oberlin College.

The Instant

13 Sunday Nov 2011

Posted by in The Life Poetic

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Some of you know that I began my writing life as a poet. It occurs to me that a section featuring some of my poetry might be a nice addition to the blog, so today I bring you The Life Poetic.

Hope that you’ll find it to be a nice addition, too. Any previously published poems of mine will be indicated as such, and will include the appropriate credits. As it happens, today’s poem is making its debut here on The Midlife Second Wife.

The Instant

Remind me to remember
Remind me not to
Don’t forget
The light is on
Don’t forget
To turn the light off
We must bank the light
For when
It will be dark when
We most need it
light

It will be dark—
The darkness we know
Or the darkness we don’t know

Let’s just keep standing
Here, beneath the full-moon light
Breathing our vivid breath
Let’s just keep standing
Your hand in my hand
In your hand

How lovely not to know
Where I begin and you end.

—Marci Rich

‘When They Fall, They Fly’

11 Tuesday Oct 2011

Posted by in Relationships and Family Life, Remarriage, The Life Poetic, Transitions

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MorgueFile image

“First marriages in the United States don’t tend to last much beyond seven years,” says Dr. Robert Epstein, a former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today and now a contributing editor of Scientific American Mind. The news is worse for couples in second marriages. According to Epstein, those unions “fall apart two-thirds of the time.” And what does the good doctor say of those intrepid, optimistic souls taking the plunge for the time that is purportedly the charm?

“Third marriages fail three-fourths of the time.”

The herald of doom concludes with this mildly understated salvo: “I think it’s reasonable to say that the way we date and mate is highly flawed.”

Crikey.

Epstein is an expert on online dating. I interviewed him for an article I wrote for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. He has also devised a site called AreWeGoodTogether.com, where those thinking about becoming hitched can determine if they should order the invitations or head for the hills. (Brave readers who are interested might consider taking the “Are We Good Together” quiz. The bravest among you might wish to share your results in the comment section, found at the end of this post.)

These cautionary facts and figures can tend to take the bloom off the romance rose, can’t they?

Wendy Swallow, whom I’ll be interviewing in the coming weeks, wrote The Triumph of Love Over Experience. She observes that, because of these statistics, “remarriage never quite steps out of the shadow of divorce.”

Here is a brief excerpt from her book:

Older newlyweds usually bring more wisdom and self-knowledge to the table, but they also bring more complications—teenagers, ex-spouses, houses thick with the memories and flotsam of other lives. And they bring one of the unsettling lessons of divorce: the understanding that you could divorce again, even as you swear you never would.

Remarriage may appear on the surface like a return to normalcy, but it is actually a gamble, a leap of faith. The failure rate for remarriage is enough to make your blood run cold. According to the Census Bureau, two out of three second marriages will fail, compared to about half of first marriages. And for those remarrying with children living at home,…three out of four marriages fail. Dr. Samuel Johnson famously called remarriage the triumph of hope over experience, and when I read those numbers, I understood for the first time how much hope you have to have.…For a woman who prides herself on her pragmatism, contemplating remarriage felt like stepping off a cliff and hoping that, despite my human biology, I would be able to fly.

Years ago, before I ever contemplated divorce, let alone remarriage, I wrote a poem that hinged on the idea of letting go and letting fly. Here it is:

Falling/Flying

A devil’s advocate once said: “You’re falling fast.”
“Tell me,” I replied, “Is there a way of falling slow?”

Better to tend the soup than speak:
skim the bony foam from the broth—
color of marrow, color of ill-health—
sprinkle the ground peppercorns,
the cleansing parsley,
collect the charming onions—
odd little pearls—
and hum to myself.

Why am I waiting?

That Catholic yearning
to confess
never really left me.
Can I shock the priest?
Is this why I’m here?
To tell? To be forgiven?

Better simply to take a walk.
Breathe for the sake of breathing.
Feel the cold for what it is.
See the dead bird without looking
for signs, for symbols,
without longing
to study its entrails. . .

That other bird, that sparrow, will survive,
filling the trees with its importance.

It knows what it knows,
goes around with a lightness
that is bravery or blindness—
or faith.

Not knowing what it signifies—
that it’s my augury, I can bow to or defy—
it just sings.

My voice should be that easy,
so when I say—
oh, I don’t know—
I love the way you smile
when you think about me,
there is no great
disturbance in the universe.

No variance. No variance at all.

But I know too much
to sing freely
or to watch these birds—

look at them bob and weave!

see how delicately
they land on the wires—

tightrope walkers
in needless equipoise—

when they fall, they fly.

 

I am writing this post from a hotel room overlooking the San Diego Bay. John and I,  just shy of our 14-month wedding anniversary, flew across the country to get here. The odds might not be with us, but I believe that the gods are. I believe that despite the baggage sometimes weighing us down, and “despite our human biology,” we are flying. And we will continue to fly.

As Emily Dickinson once wrote: “Hope is the thing with feathers.”