Poets and Poems: Donna Vorreyer and “Unrivered”

I’ve reached the age when you realize most of your life is behind you. Your priorities and interests have changed. You care more about art, for example, than you used to. Judged by how much you spend reading it, the most interesting thing in the newspaper is the obituary section.  

You realize that you’re a link in a chain; that’s why you are considerably more interested in family history and genealogy and FamilySearch.org is one of your most visited web sites. You also learn why your mother spent so much of her later years in doctors’ offices, and why your mother-in-law stays fascinated with watching the antics of birds.

 

In short, you think about things that weren’t even on your radar scope 20 and 30 years ago.

 

Poet Donna Vorreyer is thinking about those things, too, things like grief, aging, longing, the beauty of nature, why your bones are aching more, the importance of holding on, and why those small daily delights become more important and vital than your career. “I have nothing left to prove,” she writes. And she’s assembled her thoughts, meditations, and observations to form her latest collection, Unrivered: Poems. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Delicate Machinery Suspended: Poems by Anne Overstreet – review by Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper.

 

“Melbourne Heatwave,” poem by Philip Hodgins – Lucas Smith at The Sprawl of Quality.

 

Today, or was it yesterday – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Saint of Avowal – Lisa Marie Basile at Every Day Poems.

 

“La Belle Dame sans Merci,” poem by John Keats – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Retirement, pirate style

We ran down from the town, loot

in our hands and arms, to water’s edge,

small boats waiting to ferry us back

to the Sea Witch, when Capn, a millennial

no less and looking more a boy than a man,

nodded me aside, and rasped quickly

through broken teeth, his breath rummed:

“Bluebeard, old man, it’s been a good run.

Time to rest on the beach a bit.” He smiled,

knocking me over as two of my mates

quickly tied my feet and ran for the boats.

They left me my loot: a gold watch.

Retirement, pirate style.

Better than a blade in the ribs,

I suppose.

Untying the knots, I watched them

row to the ship, and would have stayed

on the sand except I could hear

angry voices from the town, clamoring

for blood with only mine available.

I did what any self-respecting pirate

would do, and made a run for the trees,

run being a relative word, similar

to scuttle and stagger.

So I lived in the forest for a time,

until the town could rebuild

if not forget, eating nuts and

small moving things, not a diet

I would recommend.

I plotted my second career, and one day

a bedraggled and barefoot man

washed up on the beach, a castaway,

the only survivor forced to the plank

he said, after a terrible pirate attack.

They took me in, and fed me,

and housed me, and took care

of a fellow victim, and I repaid

kindness with kindness. I worked

hard, I served, only reluctantly

did I accept honors and accolades.

Eventually, they elected me governor.

And I became a pirate again.

This week, Tweetspeak Poetry has a poetry prompt on pirates and aging (it was rare, way back when, for pirates to age much beyond 2 or 3 years after becoming a pirate, because they died). To see what others had to say (and write), please visit Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph by Petr Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Joseph Hesch’s “Penumbra: The Space Between”

Something happens as you age. Your memory isn’t what it used it to be, although you can remember the name of your three kindergarten teachers and your best friend in second grade but draw a total blank when you run into someone at the mall you haven’t seen in three months. You can also remember the lyrics to songs you listened to in high school; you can often even recall where you were and who you were dating when you first heard the song.

But aging isn’t just about memory, or realizing that your grandmother wasn’t an idiot for claiming her bones were predicting a weather change (scientists now say it has to be with feeling the change in barometric pressure). Or you hair thinning. Or your back surprising you one day by instructing you that you can’t pick up things the way you did when you were 19.

And more: I’ve mentioned before that art is becoming more important, which is apparently not unusual in Western culture, or at least American culture. You look upon your grandchildren completely differently than you looked upon your children.

In some strange way, you seem to focus more. You notice less but you see more. You understand more.

It is all these associations of aging that permeate Joseph Hesch’s Penumbra: The Space Between, his first collection of poetry. He understands he’s looking at the world differently. It was as if he awakened one morning and discovered he had unexpectedly experienced a metamorphosis, less traumatic that the one described by Kafka but perhaps just as profound.

It is an unsettling feeling. But it is also a gift. What before would have been barely noticing a young couple walking on the sidewalk in a poor section of town becomes something almost magical.

Silent Night in Arbor Hill

I saw them emerge from the shadow of shadows

that blanketed the alley connecting

Orange Street to Sheridan Avenue,

a vacant-eyed lane of abandoned houses

you wouldn’t wish to travel in

well-strapped daylight. Into the hazy edge

of a lemon-light circle beneath the lone

strobing street light they edged,

this young couple and their baby,

Behind him, the young man dragged

a shopping trolley that held a suitcase,

some groceries and a few presents.

The young woman held her infant close

against her breast to protect it—

from the cold of the city, I couldn’t judge—

as the snow decided it was its time.

As I drove past, upon the railings

of the darkened doorways, tiny lights

blinked and from within one a familial

brightness shone as they entered.

A once-a-year peace came over all

of us in that place, at that time,

and I thought “What a fine night,”

that silent night in Arbor Hill.

Many of the poems are like this, telling surprising stories from what at first appear to be rather ordinary situations: a walk along the beach, the last snow of winter, an old photograph, the heat of summer, a flock of birds, a harvest moon, fog in the morning, an empty liquor in the gutter of the old neighborhood. The poet is becoming more focused, noticing less but seeing more.

What Hesch is discovering is the sacred of the ordinary, which is, of course, the best and most profound gift of aging. And these poems in Penumbra give us that sacredness.

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

A Letter to My Younger Self

Dear Glynn,

I’m looking back to a moment, sometime in the spring of 1970, when you considering a decision to switch majors. You were discouraged by chemistry, and how many courses lay ahead for a pre-med major. And you knew that you heart wasn’t in pre-med; instead, your father’s heart was in pre-med, because he had wanted to be a doctor. And you were toying with two ideas simultaneously – the ministry and journalism.

You made the right decision. You didn’t know it then, and you disappointed your father by abandoning pre-med, but you made the right decision. You were not cut out to be a minister. And truth be told, you weren’t cut out to be a journalist, either. But journalism was the closest thing you were cut out for, because of the way you thought and the way you would be trained to think.

You could have been a poet, too, but you would have starved to death.

Be encouraged: you will reach the seventh decade of your life and not regret a single decision about your marriage, your work, your children, and your faith. You will look back and say I would change nothing about any of these major decisions, even if I could.

You will find disappointments, frustrations, and often – perhaps usually – tremendous stress. You will find anger and hurt. You will experience unhappiness and grief. But you will have no regrets.

You will learn to understand that life does have meaning, and that includes your life. And everything happens for a reason and a purpose.

You will discover that you will come to love your wife even more than you did when you married her.

You will find joy in your two sons (and it shouldn’t be a surprise that you will have only sons, because that’s all your family ever has). You will find joy in your grandsons (you see what I mean about our family and sons).

You will take extreme career risks. You will challenge status quo thinking, often fearlessly, and sometimes you will frighten and threaten others who believe in and own the status quo. You will pay a career price for that, but you will change things.

The dream you had in your 20s – you know which one I’m talking about – will become real in your 50s. You will come to writing fiction and poetry late, but you will come. And you won’t get rich, but you will write. You will understand that the image of God that is in each of us is first the image of the creator.

Not long before you retire, you will find poetry at work, in the most surprising ways and places. Seeing work as a kind of poetry will allow you to look at the everyday and see it in a new way. You will find the poetry late, but when you look back, you will see it is the poetry at work that has always led you to challenge the status quo.

I would tell you not to sweat some of the things you will worry about, and sometimes obsess over, but those things, too, will become part of who you are, the decisions you make, the opinions you hold, the stories you write. Life is a whole, and all things in a life make it a whole. Your stories are about the pieces, but they all come from the whole.

That is what your life will ultimately be about: the whole. And you will want to be remembered for the whole.

The High Calling is hosting a community linkup this week on Writing a Letter to Your Younger Self. For details (and the deadline), please visit The High Calling.

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Old photographs

The photographs are old,

some faded, spent flowers,

forgotten, left in a shoe box left

in a closet smelling of mothballs

and cedar, sisters in form-fitting

dresses, bobbed hair, smiling

at the photographer. I know them

but I know them thirty years later

as they were careening to old age

but smiling, always smiling

at the photographer. They knew me,

thirty year later, and we all smiled

at the photographer.

Photograph: WPA Artists, 1930s, Michigan Department of Natural Resources. 

Wordsworth was right

I’m older now, older

than I ever imagined

myself to be, my mind

stuck in neutral at nineteen

and my body demonstrating

daily how ridiculous

that notion is, but I’m

older now, older than I ever

imagined myself to be, and

I see so much that I only

knew before, understanding

how much was created

in the first ten years.

Wordsworth was right, but

it takes too long to grasp

his truth, and realize our youth

is more alive now than it was

when we lived it.

Photograph by Petr Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

More Conscious of Time

At The High Calling, we’re finishing up the last chapter and epilogue of The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement by David Brooks. And now I’m considering the story of Harold and Erica at the end of their lives, and what does that mean.

I’ve discovered I’m becoming more conscious of time, and its passing.

It’s not moving any faster than it ever did, of course; I’m simply becoming more aware of it. And it’s in the little things, like it takes five and a half minutes to unload the dishwasher.

I know this has to do with age. Chronologically, time is catching up with me. And I’m trying to stare it down.

I’m doing things at 60 that would seem more natural at 25 or 35.

I published a novel after I turned 60. I’m working on the sequel. Depending upon how the sequel does commercially, a series lies behind it. Another novel, completely different, has almost 70,000 words completed, with another novel idea rolling around in my head. And this novella thing I’ve been working on, all because I heard a piece of music. I’m experiencing a literary flood that’s almost overwhelming, at a time and an age when I thought ideas might be drying up.

My day job involves social media. I was a speechwriter who started with electronic communications in 1993, moved on to the web. And then it was blogs, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and the rest. I am not exactly what most people think of as the correct demographic for social media. As the King of Siam told Anna, “Is a puzzlement,” except that I think what’s different – why I ‘get it” when others my age and younger don’t, is that I bring a lived life to the understanding of communications technology.

I’ve become more aware of the impact of my parents on my life. I spent 18 years under their roof in direct, day-to-day contact, and 42 years later, I can see the influences they had far more clearly than I could years ago. Earlier this month, I spent a long weekend with my mother in New Orleans, and we talked in a way we never really had before. I should say I asked questions and she talked. I wish I had had a tape recorder, but I didn’t anticipate the level of conversation we ended up having. But I did take notes.

It’s no coincidence that I can look at my own two children, my two sons I love so much, and I see my influence.

Part of what Brooks says in The Social Animal is that so much of our lives is actually directed, influenced and shaped by the “dominance of unconscious processes.” It’s likely true, but it’s an incomplete statement.

His perspective is largely biological and sociological; mine is increasingly spiritual. I don’t see unconscious processes directing what I do. Instead, I experience how God has wired me, both collectively as a human being and individually as me, and I’m only gradually becoming aware of the totality of it all.

And it is awesome.

“We are not who we think we are,” Brooks writes.

And he’s right. We aren’t.

Until we understand that we are the children of God.

And then everything changes.

To see more posts on the final chapter and epilogue, please visit The High Calling, where our discussion is hosted by Laura Boggess.

I don't plan to retire

It might have been a coincidence – perhaps not – but I was asked a question this past week as I was reading chapter 6 of Mindfulness by Ellen Langer, entitled “Mindful Aging.” And the question, by a friend, was this: “Have you thought about what you’re going to do when you retire?”

I’m of an age when that question is not unusual. At work, there are two of us about the same age, and then there’s a gap of some years, and then one person 10 years younger and then several 20 years younger. And then all those 20-somethings, many of whom I helped to hire.

My answer to the question: “I don’t plan to retire.”

Now there may come a time when I “retire” from where I officially work. But I don't plan to “retire.” I see it simply as a new phase of what I’ll be doing in life, assuming health and physical condition cooperate.

Retirement, for me, won’t be about the pursuit of “leisure.” I can’t imagine myself living from golf game to golf game (I don’t play golf), nor can I imagine myself in some retirement community in Arizona, going shirtless to the grocery store.

But it will be about the pursuit of something, but not leisure.

And it won’t be about surrounding myself with grandchildren. (Note that I use the plural; Cameron is going to become a brother next May.) I dearly love my grandson and grandchild to come, but they won’t be around me all the time. And that’s as it should be. They, and their parents, have their own lives to live. I can love and influence and be there when needed – but I can’t dominate and I can’t direct.

I do know some of what I’ll be doing.

I have a desire to get more involved in missions, a desire that’s been quietly growing since I did a short-term missions trip in 2002 to Eastern Europe. The desire is not to become a missionary in a foreign land, but simply to become more involved. That’s all I understand for now.

And I will be writing. Writing has been a part of my life since I was about 9, and it always will be, as long as I can hold a pen, press a letter on a computer keyboard, or speak into a microphone or video camera.

Most of my writing has been in corporate communications – speeches, articles, papers, news releases, reports, and now tweets and Facebook posts. But that has been changing, and it will continue to change.

A novel manuscript I’ve been working on for five years has caught the interest of a small, new publisher. It’s now been edited by an extraordinarily gifted editor and published author. The draft contract in sitting in my email box, and it seems fair and reasonable (although I’m asking my attorney to look it over). Given how fast this can happen today, it may be published by the end of this year.

It’s not serious or literary fiction. It’s a story, one that had been bottled up inside me for three years before I wrote the first word. It started on a airline flight to San Francisco, when I was listening to one of those music channels and heard a song called “Luna Rosa” (sung in Italian). The song evoked an image in my mind – a priest dancing on a beach at sunset. It was an image that wouldn’t let go. The beach is gone, and so is the sunset but the image of the dancing priest remains and lies at the center of the manuscript.

What I’ve learned is that publishing this manuscript, while gratifying and exciting, is not the point. The writing, the telling of the story, is the point.

So, no, I don’t intend to retire. I intend to “mindfully age,” as Langer describes in her book.

I still have too many stories I’m supposed to tell.

Over at The High Calling, Laura Boggess has been leading a discussion of Mindfulness. To see more posts on this chapter, please visit The High Calling.