Poetry: A vaccine for the soul

Apr 22, 2021

Last spring, before we knew exactly what was happening, the crushing unknown kept us awake at night. With our schedules cleared and our plans cancelled, we had no where to hide from ourselves.

We tried running,
we tried numbing,
we tried crying
we tried laughing
and sometimes these things worked.

Still I found that my longings were louder than my distractions. My only real relief has been to give the longing a voice through writing.

Dear Mary Oliver

Jan 21, 2021

I wrote this shortly after Mary Oliver died, as I was struck by how grieved I felt. Though I only knew her through her writing, I felt I had lost a teacher. She has helped teach so many how to pay attention, breath deeper, how to write about our actual lives in language we actually use. The first poem I remember reading of hers is one called Thirst, given to me years ago on a small square of paper. That white wrinkled square has somehow managed to survive on our fridge to this day. From there I drank in her words often and still cannot manage to go to a bookstore without at least looking in the O's of the poetry section.