Leaning Toward Light
Greetings! I am a poet turned memoirist. I used to teach writing to kids of all ages, but now I get to write anytime I want.
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Tulips to bring some spring color to my life today.
If you’ve been following along with me, you know I set myself a challenge of writing a newsletter every month this year. Like any challenge it has its ups and downs. Today was one of those downs. Only two days left of April and I couldn’t think of anything to write about. Or at least anything that I thought would be interesting to those of you who read this.
And then, like so often happens, serendipity fell into my lap (is that an appropriate metaphor?). I subscribe online to The New York Times. In these tumultuous days I mostly just read the headlines so I can at least know what craziness is happening in the world. I keep a tight rein on doomscrolling because it’s very bad for my health (and yours as well!). But today what popped into my inbox was the NYT poetry challenge.
The poem they chose for this poetry challenge is Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Recuerdo.” It’s a poem I’ve read many times but forgotten about until today. I listened to it being read by Ada Limon, our poet laureate, by the writer Anne Patchett and the chef Ina Garten. I read it out loud to myself while sipping my coffee. I played the game included to help me memorize the poem by the end of the week.
And I smiled for the first time this morning. What better way to end National Poetry Month?
Buy it HERE from Bookshop.org
For Christmas 2023, my mother gave each member of our family a book. By then she couldn’t shop herself, either online or in stores, so my sister Lori and bought the books. Then one day we bundled Mom up and brought her to our townhouse in Portland. She could still make it up the fifteen steps from the garage to the living room. The three of us sat around the dining table wrapping the books. Lori and I had cut off the the fronts of Christmas cards to use as gift cards and Mom wrote a note for each person. When it came time for our presents, Lori and I took turns leaving the room so we wouldn’t spoil the surprise.
The book I received that year was Leaning Toward Light: Poems for gardens & the hands that tend them, edited by Tess Taylor. On the card my mother wrote: To the best, almost perfect daughter from Mom. For a while last year I resolved to read one the poems from that book to begin my writing day. I still use the card as a bookmark. I found it at page 54 where I had stopped.
Today when I didn’t think I had anything to say it was because I was feeling empty of my own words. Listening to Millay’s beautiful words and reading them out loud made me remember how important it is to fill ourselves up with beauty when the world presses on us too heavily. It’s time I got back to reading a poem a day. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Here is a poem from my poetry chapbook In the Poem an Ocean (Big Table Publishing, January 2011). The third stanza brings my mother back to me. If you’d like a copy, contact me HERE.
From Faces of the Madonna
III.
From the window over the sink
I watch my mother pick beans.
She wears a straw hat with plastic roses.
The string lost, she has tied two
strips of gauze into a bow on top.
Her square hands,
the left with its white-gold wedding ring,
mingle lovingly with the leaves.
Her body squats close to the ground.
She concentrates on
the beans,
the vine,
the earth
she has nurtured.
YOUR TURN
How are you leaning into the light? I’d love to hear from you.
BOOK RECOMMENDATION
My dear friend Tania Pryputniewicz’s book The Fool in the Corn (Saddle Road Press, December 2022) is a beautiful poetry collection filled with poems of love and loss. The poems about her own mother’s illness and death touch me deeply.
Order it HERE from Bookshop.org