Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

poetry

I Am From

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This past weekend I spent some time connecting with a lovely group of women at a retreat. They were a welcome infusion of energy and delight after a long week cocooned in quiet solitude while my gang of men frolicked in Minnesota for spring break.

On Saturday, a few of the retreat ladies and I participated in a fun and fruitful writing exercise that I simply have to share with you. I can’t take one bit of credit for it. I first spotted this exercise on my friend Evi Wusk’s blog, and the moment I saw it, I knew it would be perfect for the retreat’s theme, which was titled “Remarkable: Your Place in God’s Story.”

The gist of the exercise, which is based on a George Ella Lyon poem, is quite simple actually. You fill in the blanks on this form, rewrite the resulting poem on another sheet of paper, adding detail and refining the lines as you go, and voila, at the end of 20 minutes or so, you have your very own “I am From” poem.

If it sounds like magic, it kind of is. Every single one of the poems read aloud by the participants in my groups were beautiful and unique, rich with detail and sweet with nostalgia. Their poems sparked an engaging conversation and offered each participant the gratification of creating a meaningful piece of writing.

I urge you to try this sweet little exercise yourself, or better yet, print out the form, hand it to your parents, grandparents or other beloved relatives in your life, and encourage them to write their own “I am From” poem. I promise it will result in a cherished keepsake.

Here’s my poem from last weekend’s workshop. Writing it made me smile.

I Am From

I am from washing cars with my dad in the driveway,
sudsy rivulets running into the sewer,
damp towels in a heap.

I am from the wafting scents of ammonia and White Owl cigars,
from reading on the screened porch during a summer thunderstorm,
from one bathroom for the four of us,
and louvered bedroom doors.

I am from swiping Golden Delicious and sprinting from the scowling farmer
(we all swore he had a gun).

From apple trees with limbs for climbing,
from nestling behind a screen of fragrant blossoms,
The Secret Garden in hand,
sleeve of Keebler chocolate-covered grahams in a hollow at my feet.

I am from Saturday night pizza at Santi’s,
and laughing loud,
from Earl and Betty, Fred and Eileen.
From boisterous storytellers and hot dogs and beans,
from “Get your head outta your duffel bag”
to “Lay me out in lavender.”

I am from kneeling behind the red velvet curtain of the confessional,
from acrid incense in my nose and Holy Water on my fingertips.

I am from East Longmeadow, Massachusetts, Ireland, England, and France.
From Irish soda bread with raisins and carraway seeds
to beef stew with soft carrots and stringy meat.
From Papa sing, “Michelle my belle” while flipping pancakes on the griddle,
from drill sergeant dad and Bisquick mom.

I am from the stack of photo albums on the lower shelf of the cherry table,
red leather covers,
pages yellowing,
crinkled cellophane peeling away from the glue.

Why Poetry?

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I admit, I’ve always been a nervy-nelly when it comes to poetry. I am easily intimidated by it, and I tend to avoid it when I can (which was tricky during my English major years). But poet Megan Willome has me thinking these days. Her new book, The Joy of Poetry, has cracked the door, and I’m quietly slipping in, trying on a poem or two, letting the words simmer and sit for a bit. If Megan can get me to read poetry, I think she can get anyone to give it a try. And if you might be wondering, “Well, why poetry?” Here’s her answer: “You might as well ask why chocolate? Why drive along a country road on a sunny day with the windows down and the music up? Why green tea with fresh mint from the farmer’s market? Why dogs?” And there’s also this, as Megan says: you never know when a poem will offer you the secret something you need to get through the day. Frankly, that’s a good enough reason for me.

Joy of Poetry

“Because I never know when I’ll find the secret something I need to get through the day, in a handful of oddly spaced words.” — from The Joy of Poetry, by Megan Willome

Guest Post by Megan Willome

Suppose — for funsies — you decide to read a poem today. Just one. Nothing too long. Something from this century. Let’s say you pick Dana Gioia’s “New Year’s.” You pick it because you know what New Year’s is; you’ve celebrated it every year of your life.

It’s going to be a hard day at work, nothing you can’t handle but not the kind of day you’re looking forward to. You don’t really want a “You go, girl!” You’re not in the mood for the bland comfort of “It’s gonna be OK.” Maybe you need to be distracted.

You have 5 minutes.

You read the poem.

Hmmm. There’s a lot there.

The words are clear, although you’re not completely sure what it all means. If you had more than 5 minutes, there’s a lot you could unpack. But you have 5 minutes.

You like this sentence: “The present is / The leaky palm of water that we skim / From the swift, silent river slipping by.”

Oh, look — “present” and “palm” both have P’s. And “swift, silent river slipping by” sounds great. You say those five words aloud. Hey, there’s some rhyme.

But you like most the “leaky palm”. You remember being a child on a camping trip, scooping water from a river. Your hands couldn’t hold it all. The water leaked out through your palms (although you would never have used those words). You never got a good drink.

Your 5 minutes is up. Time to go.

At work you pour a cup of coffee and think about the “leaky palm.” You’re so glad the mug you’re holding doesn’t leak. Later in a meeting someone uses the word “skim,” and you think of the poem and smile, and no one knows why you’re smiling. The day is exactly as unfun as you expected. On the drive home you notice the river you drive past every day. You notice it’s always “slipping by.” How did you never notice before?

Those 5 minutes with the poem, they didn’t change your life, didn’t supply the secrets of the universe. The poem didn’t even change the facts of your day — it was still a tough day. But those 5 minutes, they weren’t wasted.

Maybe tomorrow you’ll read another poem.

MeganWillomeTea. Poetry. Tea. Poetry. Tea. That’s how Megan starts her writing day.

She serves as managing editor and contributing writer for the WACOAN, a monthly  magazine in Waco, Texas.

The Joy of Poetry, a memoir-ish look at her long relationship with poetry (published by T.S. Poetry Press) is Megan’s first book.

You can connect with Megan at her blog, as well as on Twitter: @meganwillome.

Prayer is the Attention that Comes First

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A few weeks ago during the Q & A session after a book reading, my friend Kori asked me what I thought about prayer. I stumbled over the question, admitting that my definition of and approach to prayer is broader and more fluid than it used to be.

These days, I told the audience, my prayers are often wordless. My best prayers, the ones that feel most genuine, are simply those moments I stand in my backyard, glimpsing the early morning slant of light, pausing to catch the melodious call of an unseen oriole. I don’t say anything. I don’t even really think anything. I just simply am.

“In those moments I don’t consciously realize I’m praying,” I said to the audience, “but I think that’s essentially what it is: a wordless prayer, a moment of silent praise and thanksgiving to God, a tuning-in to my surroundings and to him.”

At the time, perched on a stool in the local bookstore, my answer felt like a cop-out and not nearly “religious” enough.

Recently I sat in a weathered deck chair overlooking Lake Superior and watched a spider skate from her gossamer threads to the sun-warmed rail. Just beyond the deck, two Canadian geese flew side-by-side like a single, sleek body, low over the still, blue water. The lake was calm, the sun sizzling off the surface like a Fourth of July sparkler.

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I was reading poetry that morning, a rarity for me – a volume of Mary Oliver poems I’d picked up in a local bookstore. I turned to a poem entitled “The Real Prayers are Not the Words, but the Attention that Comes First,” and I knew, right then, that was the answer I had awkwardly tried to offer the audience at my reading weeks earlier.

Prayer is often wordless acknowledgement, attention, silent awe. Prayer is standing still in order to open myself to God. Prayer, for me, is often the moment that comes before the words. The moment I watch two geese fly as one and a spider dance from web to rail. The moment I pause in my backyard to listen to the oriole singsong from the river birch tree.

I think this is what God conveys when he says, in Psalm 46, “Be still, and know that I am God.”

We miss him in the flurry of day-to day-activity, our eyes fixed on our smartphones, iPod cords dangling from our ears. We miss him as we hurtle across town, dashing into the grocery store to pick up a frozen pizza for dinner, squeezing in a quick call to mom as we scurry toward the automatic doors. And then we wonder why our prayers feel empty and dry when we finally pencil in a few moments for quiet contemplation with our Bible and our journal.

When we offer God only a fraction of ourselves, we experience only a fraction of him.

We deprive ourselves of the fullest, deepest experience of God’s love when don’t allow ourselves ever to be fully present with him and in him.

Mary Oliver and the psalmist are onto something important. They know that the truest, most genuine connections with God often come not in the helter-skelter of daily life, and perhaps not even in the words of prayers whispered, recited or thought, but in the moments we quiet ourselves enough to notice where and who we are.

Moments so pure, so untainted, they precede even language itself.

{the poem that inspired the blog post}:

The Real Prayers are Not the Words, but the Attention that Comes First

The little hawk leaned sideways and, tilted, rode
the wind. Its eye at this distance looked like green
glass; its feet were the color of butter. Speed, obviously,
was joy. But then, so was the sudden, slow circle
it carved into the slightly silvery air, and the squaring
of its shoulders, and the pulling into itself the long,
sharp-edged wings, and the fall into the grass where it
tussled a moment, like a bundle of brown leaves, and
then, again, lifted itself into the air, that butter-color
clenched in order to hold a small, still body, and it flew
off as my mind sang out oh all that loose, blue rink
of sky, where does it go to, and why?           — Mary Oliver

{As we prepare to leave for the north woods, I am reposting this reflection that ran last July. I’m hoping to squeeze in a little time and maybe a few poems on that deck again this year}.

To Know the Dark, Go Dark

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“What are you reading?” he asks, diving onto the bed, pulling Nana’s afghan over his body as he curls next to me.

“Some poems,” I answer, showing him the cover of the Wendell Berry collection I picked up from the library. “I don’t usually read poetry,” I admit, “but sometimes it’s good to try something new.”

“Read me one,” he says, pulling the afghan up to his chin.

I flip through the book to find the the shortest poem. I read “To Know the Dark” aloud, because it’s only four lines:

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

“So what’s the answer?” Rowan asks.

“What do you mean, ‘the answer’?” I say.

“You know,” he says, “The answer. The answer to the poem.”

He thinks it’s a riddle. Too much Harry Potter and Percy Jackson, evidently.

“Oh honey, there’s no one answer,” I say. “That’s the hard part and the wonderful part about poetry, there’s not just one right answer.”

He pauses a moment, considering. “It’s a bat,” he says. “It’s about a bat.”

I read the lines again. “Yeah, I can see how you would say that,” I say. “Because of the part that says ‘without sight,” and the ‘dark feet and dark wings.’” Rowan nods, pleased.

He stays under the afghan to hear another poem, and then, concluding this one is about a tiger, he leaps off the bed and out the door, leaving me under the afghan alone, thinking about his question.

What’s the answer?

I think sometimes I approach faith the same way Rowan approached the poem. What’s the answer, I want to know. THE answer. And while I know that Jesus is the be-all-and-end-all answer, and that’s all, in the end, I really need to know, I often find myself grappling for other answers to questions that gnaw at me, the why questions.

Why did my cousin die before she reached age 30?

Why did my children’s grandparents die too soon, leaving them with this empty, awful grief?

Why do 26,000 kids die every single day because they don’t have access to water, something as simple and readily available as water?

Why, in short, does suffering exist? And why doesn’t God do anything about it?

I want THE answer to that question. And others.

Religion, like poetry, doesn’t provide all the answers.  We might get hints. We might get flashes of clarity, moments of illumination, but a lot of the time, we live in the dark, turning questions around in our heads, trying to figure out the why, searching the Bible for answers, praying for the peace that passes all understanding.

Maybe though, what I need to do is revisit the answer I offered Rowan about poetry. Maybe the hard part and the wonderful part about questions in faith is that there isn’t just one right answer.
Maybe God doesn’t give us all the answers because we need to know the dark, to go dark,  to see for ourselves that even the dark blooms and sings.
 
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”  — Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

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