Drew Myron's Blog, page 7

Blessings

In celebration of National Poetry Month, an excerpt from blessing the boats by Lucille Clifton. Illustration by Jack Wong.

blessing the boats

(at St. Mary's)

may the tide

that is entering even now

the lip of our understanding

carry you out

beyond the face of fear

may you kiss

the wind then turn from it

certain that it will

love your back     may you

open your eyes to water

water waving forever

and may you in your innocence

sail through this to that

— Lucille Clifton

1.
The blueberry bushes are beginning to bud, reaching for sun and straining for restoration. The cherry and pear trees, too. And the dogwood, with blooms big as saucers, turns skyward. Winter’s long slog has reached its end. Rejuvenation begins. Inside and out.

All this renewal, each small faith.

2.
What new can we say to welcome spring? All our hoorays and hallelujahs are not new praise but instead, like hope, a familiar welling within. We simply cannot believe — and yet want to desperately believe — in fresh starts.

3.
And so, Lucille. She arrives for National Poetry Month to carry us from winter’s long ache to the fresh sea of spring.

Maybe you’ve heard this poem before. It’s a poetry staple. And yet, this year I read it with awakening.

The poem is quiet and lean, and small (in words, in form, in type). But now the demure poem enlarges my heart. The smallness welcomes my fumble and shuffle, my doubt and despair. It is benediction. Come close, it says, let me love you back to life.

may you sail through this to that

Like a prayer. Like an answer.

* * *

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Thankful Thursday: Good Books, lately

The world spins. And I turn to books.

Turn to the imaginary world, calm, steady, quiet.

On this Thankful Thursday, I’m grateful for these recently read good books; I want to press them into every hand.

And I’m thankful for libraries and bookstores — used and new — that open the path to pages, allowing us to wander, wonder, breathe.

NOVELS

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

What took me so long to find this 2022 gem? Sure, the title put me off, but this is now my favorite novel.

Set in Appalachia, this is the story of a boy who survives foster care, disregard, addiction, and crushing losses. Thanks to fantastic characters, plot, pacing, and tone, this 500-page novel is a fast and fevered treasure. The start, however, is a bit slow with a voice that takes some time to catch the cadence. But quite soon, this character is in my skin and I couldn’t put this book down.  

Also good:  The Poisonwood Bible. One of Kingsolver's best-known novels, this 1998 hit tells the story of a family of evangelicals who go on a mission to Africa. It, too, is a riveting read.

Welcome Home, Stranger by Kate Christensen

In this novel about a loss, grief, and growing older, a 50-something journalist reluctantly returns home after the death of her mother. 

Because so much of a good reading experience is based on timing, this novel was the right book at the right time.

Also good: The Great Man by Kate Christensen. A moving novel mixing art and literature, this book earned the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction.

ESSAYS

Wallflower at the Orgy by Nora Ephron
Fifty years after its debut, this essay collection still shines. Sure, some of the 70s-era topics show signs of age, but Ephron — a journalist turned writer and filmmaker — remains forever quick, sharp, smart, and funny.

Also good: I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts On Being A Woman by Nora Ephron. A quick, easy, humorous collection of short essays on aging, published in 2006. Ephron died in 2012 at the age of 71.

NON-FICTION

Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole by Susan Cain

While not as powerful as her 2012 bestseller, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, this book is a compelling affirmation for the value of sadness and longing.

It’s Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation — big and small — for people, places, things and more.

What are you thankful for today?

* * *

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Thankful Thursday: Wrestle

I am busy with the business of ends.

Sorting, sifting, moving. Checklists and phone calls, pleads and waits.

I am packing a life, not for storage but forever.

 * * *

It's Thankful Thursday, and I am not thankful for death.

And yet, this grief, so plunging and primal, feels essential. Against death, grief is strangely writhing and alive. As if to wrestle. My restless mind darts between past and present and I am wrangling death to some obscure and necessary end.

Is this what it means to mourn?

* * *

What I really want to say is that I'm afraid to stop for sadness.

It hangs in the corners of a quiet room. It elbows into doorways and songs, into glasses half-empty. Sidles into the laundry hamper and stirs in my tea, says remember this and what about me?

Now everything means something — this cup, that photo, a slip of paper tucked in a book — and yet everything means less. How do you know what to toss, what to keep? And what is life but forget and repeat?

But I do not tarry, do not rest. I fold and wash, push and heave. The check has cleared. The door is locked. The mailbox empty. Every thing has its place but my mind hops and darts back, back, back. Past is present, is now, is never more.

Nothing is final if the mind still moves.

 * * *

Grief is tough to write and tougher still to read. It is also impossible to escape and imperative to tackle.

— Onyi Nwabineli

* * *

I was seasoned. I had spent years preparing. And yet, I was not prepared.

“If your parent passed after a long illness, you may have had more time to prepare, but no amount of preparation makes your grief any less significant when it hits,” grief experts say. “You may still feel stunned and disbelieving.”

Anticipatory grief is another term that rings true. But no one talks about death’s long and exhausting path. Let us acknowledge the aching frustration, not of death, but of the wearing march to the end.  

Days after my father’s death, grief groups and therapy were offered. For free. What I needed — and hope for others — was (free) professional counseling in the agonizing years before death. In that grueling span in which we pressed against the challenges of a chronic, terminal illness.

* * *

It’s true that grief comes in waves, knocks you down and pulls you under, then leaves you on a silent shore, contained but shaken.

Each day the wave is less. Storm turns to mist. I count the hours, then days, between tears.

I write this now as if resolved. As if sadness has left the building. But really it’s just my mind shuffling memory, making and remaking each recollection, turning truth to want, memory to maybe.

* * *

I have forgotten the sound of my grandfather’s voice and my grandmother’s laugh is growing faint. I try to remember my mother’s hug.

Not long ago, I started a list: The Dead I Have Known.

It’s too long.

Maybe it’s a creepy thing to do. Or maybe you, too, keep a tally of names you study with love and longing, with memories you stretch to keep them fresh.

* * *  

The question for me is how to live well inside our short, breakable lives.

— Sam Guglani, oncologist 

* * *

For so long I’ve seen only endings, so I am encouraged with this suggestion:

“It isn’t wrong to grieve. In order to move forward, it’s necessary. But, finally, it will again be possible to look toward to the future with hope and excitement. Life has been difficult, almost unbearably so, but you can sense something beautiful on the horizon.”

Yes, it’s a sappy vision. But, I’ll take it, and hold tight to gratitude, too.

* * *

It's Thankful Thursday.

Because joy expands and contracts in direct relation to our sense of gratitude, let’s pause to appreciate the good.

What are you thankful for today?

 

On Sunday: Unknowing

photo by Rizwan Patel, courtesy of Creative Commons

If I am to do nothing, let me do it gallantly

I don't know the name of this

flower, last night's moon, the cloud

formations and what they mean.  

 

I don't know the bird balancing

the wire with an urgent demand for

something I can't understand, but

 

I know the words bearing few

letters and too much weight:

hurry and wait, hold and grace

 

On these long days

I circle the room for answers

to questions not yet formed.

 

I don't know what to ask

of god, self, love, the world.

If this were someone else's story

an answer would arrive

 

in a piano that plays a single

long note, or in a small bird with

an insistent voice, calling

 

as I tuck myself into a

nest of unknowing where I

find a comfort that was

here and hidden all along.

— Drew Myron

Note: Title is a line borrowed from the Book of Common Prayer:

Make me ready, Lord, for whatever it may be.

If I am to stand up, help me to stand bravely. 

If I am to sit still, help me to sit quietly.

If I am to lie low, help me to do it patiently. 

And if I am to do nothing, let me do it gallantly.

* * *

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Thankful Thursday: Pen Pal

Dear You,

 

I can’t remember when I last wrote.

It’s been raining for weeks, day after oppressive day — gray.

My head is saturated, a sponge of moss, leaves and debris.

Walking from door to car seems a great effort. The days

run together, each punctuated with dinner, drink, dessert.

Sleep, really, is a form of dessert, except that the dreams

are mean and vivid. Mornings are coffee sweet, a swirl

of hope and cream.

 

What’s new? The world keeps dying, and reviving.

My eyes have swollen shut, in what may be a

symbol of “seeing” too much and not enough.

Some days — in light rain moments — I walk along

the river and see its end. When I blink, somewhere

to my left and in the distance, the river bends and

the water rolls on. Isn’t everything in some

anonymous distance?

 

Even the ducks, paired off and paddling,

look soaked and done in.

 

Yesterday at the grocery store, I ran into a woman

I know just a bit. We chatted briefly, easily, in that small

way that says nothing in words and everything in tone.

Her name is Joy and that sounds like an opening for

an easy life. But this time I saw in her eyes a wound

of some sort, and liked her more because of it. 

 

I’ve never been one of those ‘girls weekend’ kind of

women who gather in packs, boozy and cackling.

While I might like that kind of easy banter I

was never asked or found a way to want it.

 

Instead, I am the woman in a clutch of quiet and

many pauses. I’m looking for that wound, for proof

of a deeper hurt. But I’ve missed out, haven’t I?

In searching for shadow I’ve lost the chance for light.

 

Oh, maybe it’s just January.

 

The rain won’t stop. Gutters are rushing, and damp

seeps into every pore. Wet has worn my finish to expose

all the ugly gray sadness inside. It’s too much, this letter

that says things not yet fully formed.

 

You, faraway friend, are a dear pen pal

and a source of quiet, endearing joy.

 

Love,

Drew

* * *

It's Thankful Thursday.

I’ve been thinking of friendship and my gratitude for penpals, those trusty confidants with whom I share dreads and desires, longings and leaps. A faraway friend indulges and encourages, listens, nods, and responds. I am grateful for the steady presence, the willingness to open the envelope again and again.

And You, Dear Reader: What are you thankful for today?

* * *

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Try This: Distilled

I’ve been feeling spare.

Maybe it’s winter’s long gray, the bare trees against a steady sky, or the static line of stillness.

Life is full, of course, humming along with errands, appointments, deadlines, and chores. But there is a quietude to winter that distills the days. The season demands we get to the essence. Less blather, more basics.

“Unremarkable lives should go unremarked upon,” Neil Genzlinger wrote years ago in The New York Times Book Review in a rail against memoir.

I, too, am sapped by oversharing. And yet, daily life is a writer’s essential tool. Our unremarkable lives are the small seeds of routine that grow into a story that softens, a poem that moves, a painting that shouts.

“Poetry is . . . that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does,” explained Allen Ginsberg.

Lately, I’ve been documenting the days by writing in review. One good line, or two. A small gathering. I’m enjoying the low-pressure distillation, the way it clears and cleans. The exercise of language. The thrift of description.

In The Writing Life, Annie Dillard gave us both permission and push to be mindful of our time. “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives,” she wrote. “What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.”

Try This: Near the end of the day, loosen your mind and let a highlight roll in. Morning coffee? A good walk? Pressing project? Battle with the boss? Any small thing will do. In fact, the smaller the better. If you experienced a big thing — a heated exchange, an illness, a happy surprise — break it down from chunk, to nugget, to seed. Think it out. Distill it down. Write it out.

Distillation is a great way to exercise the writing muscle. With less words, greater impact. And in brevity, comes levity. A lightness of being. The mind is sorting, the hand is sifting. The days take shape.

today, time lapse

trust
oh dark sky
oh winter moon
on these silent nights
how you shine

resistance
in a basement gym
muscles burn
against time

storm
eat, sleep, read 
snow turns to rain
turns to sliding gloss 

conundrum 
a goodwill find brings 
unexpected pleasure, 
while an act of goodwill 
creates unexpected tension

traveling in the dark
driving east, the wolf moon howls us home

mourning
a long bend stretches the body worn from winter’s ache

listening
a door cracks open 
to let a friend begin

— drew myron

One Good Line

One good line — from The Glass Room, a murder mystery that takes place at a writing retreat.

It’s been a long week in the Pacific Northwest. After weeks of rain and gloom, winter arrived with a powerful storm of snow, sleet, snain and ice.

Yes, snain is a form of weather, as is graupel.

Power, pipes, peace of mind — all weighted with weather.

Life closed up: schools, shops, even postal delivery (the horror!), and the world seemed to shrink.

Maybe you’ve felt this too?

In a storm, life inches along quietly like a slow moving film that turns your focus narrow, intimate. Much like how a fever can clear the body and break open the mind, winter turns life crystalline. Snow gathers knowingly on a ledge. A muffled silence gives every sound meaning so that the furnace ticks, the refrigerator hums, and the turn of a page cracks through the room. Nothing is everything, is cocooned, is a secret sort of holy.

In this quietude, I burned through books. Mysteries, novels, essays, poems . . . tick tick tick. Finishing one, I reached quickly for another. A binge, a feast, I gobbled. Maybe it was the haze of storm that turned me greedy. But it was also a sort of rapture in that every book — even the mediocre ones — were full of delights. One good line after another.

From Fox and I: An Uncommon Friendship, by Catherine Raven:

It’s a safe assumption that any plant called ‘weed’ goes through life with low expectations.

From The Hurting Kind, a poem by Ada Limón:

I have always been too sensitive, a weeper
from a long line of weepers.
I am the hurting kind. I keep searching for proof.

From I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman, by Nora Ephron:

Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter . . . Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it’s a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it’s a way of making contact with someone else’s imagination after a day that’s all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss.

Maybe this is the gift of stormy weather: to sit quietly, pleasantly absorbed, thankful for the companion of a good book. One good line is all it takes.

What are you reading? Send me a line!

This, too

This, too, was a gift

In the dream you

came to me as words

scrawled in a book

I read over again.

I see you in the space

between breath. And then

an echo of you arrives:

In thin light, pull

yourself tall.

 

Saying goodbye

your frail body draws

next to mine and

for a fraction I

feel you lean

to let me in.

— Drew Myron

 

* title from a line in The Uses of Sorrow by Mary Oliver

* * *

The world turns on words.

Thank you for reading & writing.

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Good Books: Past, Present, Next!

Happy New Year to me! Behold, a fresh stack to start 2024.

Is there a better gift than a book? Santa & Friends were good to me, and I’m starting the new year with a fresh mix of literary delights.

But first, I’m looking back. It was a good year in books.

I don’t track the number of books read, though I typically complete at least one book a week, and two to three when I’m zipping along. Let’s say I read 100 books in 2023. Of those, here are my top picks (these are books read, not necessarily published, in 2023):

FICTION

They’re Going to Love You by Meg Howrey
Beautiful! Every page, in every way. Best book of 2023!

Trust by Hernan Diaz
With inventive storytelling and tricky maneuvers, this 2022 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is both unexpected and engaging.

No Two Persons by Erica Bauermeister
A fresh take on my favorite topic: books! How does one action affect another? This weaving of lifelines is touching, tender, true. A feel-good book!

The Index of Self-Destructive Acts by Christopher Beha
An absorbing sprawl of a novel. This complex family tale enthralled me.

Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson
A sly, suspenseful novel in which a man slowly unwinds his tale of his success. Intimate and engaging, this book is a slow burn.

NONFICTION

That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour by Sunati Puri
Best nonfiction of 2023! A compassionate and profound book that blends personal story with loving suggestions for end-of-life preparation.

The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel
The true story of a young couple who stole over $2 billion dollars worth of artwork in less than 10 years. This astounding story is meticulously researched and written so smoothly that the true-crime tale reads like riveting fiction.

The People’s Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine by Ricardo Nuila
With great empathy, Dr. Nuila reveals the roots of our broken healthcare system and introduces a working model that values people over payment.

Violation: Collected Essays by Sallie Tisdale
Oregon writer Sallie Tisdale is endlessly curious and has trained her insight on everything from nursing homes to elephants to reality television.

POETRY

Love and Other Poems by Alex Dimitrov
Dimitrov’s third book of poetry feels fresh and unfettered with language that is conversational and of-the-moment.

The Lord and the General Din of the World by Jane Mead
A beautiful, complicated, treasure of a book!

Concerning That Prayer I Cannot Make (an excerpt)

I am not equal to my longing.
Somewhere there should be a place
the exact shape of my emptiness—
there should be a place
responsible for taking one back.
The river, of course, has no mercy—
it just lifts the dead fish
toward the sea.

Listen—
all you bare trees
burrs
brambles
piles of twigs
red and green lights flashing
muddy bottle shards
shoe half buried—listen

listen, I am holy.

— Jane Mead

Tell me: What are your best books of 2023? And what’s next on your list?

I always enjoy hearing from you. Send light, write to me.

Just Do It? Did It!

Write more, earn more, do more.
Eat less, spend less, worry less.

Uggh. Years ago I gave up the grind of resolutions.
My inner critic is alive and kicking, why give her more material?

Instead, at the suggestion of writer Lisa Romeo, I practice the annual creation of an I Did It List.

This week — or maybe the next (I’m passively rebellious, after all) — I’ll take time to write a list of things accomplished in the past year. From the puny to the profound, everything is ripe for review.

Did I try something new? Make new friends? Did I stretch myself physically, mentally, emotionally? Did I help others? Was I moved by a poem, stirred by a movie, invigorated by a view?

To me, this process of reflection is more interesting and encouraging than the tired resolutions I used to churn out every year. Those plans and promises were usually short-lived and only set me up for a cycle of failure, disappointment and discouragement.

Some years are tough, though, and writing the list can seem a daunting task. But even in the dark times I almost always find nuggets I had forgotten: big, small, and unexpected, and feel buoyed by the accomplishment. Books read, stories written, friends made, leaps, lessons, victories — I did it!

One caveat, I keep my Did It list private. No one likes a braggart. (As evidence I refer you to the oft-mocked Christmas Letter from Overachieving Parents with Perfect Children).

Still, you may want to shout your list from rooftops or whisper in a phone. I understand. Your List might encourage another to recall their own success. These are difficult days, and a good list — like good news or a fresh poem — lifts with the air of sharing.

Again I resume the long

lesson: how small a thing

can be pleasing, how little

in this hard world it takes

to satisfy the mind

and bring it to rest.

— Wendell Berry
excerpt from Sabbaths, 1999, VII
as it appears in Given: Poems

* * *

The world turns on words.
Thank you for reading & writing.

• If you know someone who might enjoy this blog — please share.

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• If you are here, reading this now — thank you!