Figurine
Joseph is broken
His glass figure no longer kneels after
His brush with the cold hard tile floor
His head turns downward as if he always knew his fate
My fault. My fault. My most grievous fault.
Still
Mother and Child glow in candlelight
Unbroken
– Megan Willome
I am privileged to be in the Acknowledgements for Shelly Miller’s Searching for Certainty. She writes, “Thanks to Megan Willome for your stellar poetry critiques on the poems I included.”
Oh, Shelly, it was all joy.
She contacted me this spring:
“My editor is allowing me to include some short poems as epigraphs for chapters in the new book I’m releasing in October. To be honest, I read them and think are they even well written? I know that sounds funny but I really have no clue as to what I’m doing, just following my instincts when it comes to poetry.“
Of course I said yes. She responded:
“I’m totally open and teachable. This is helpful for me and I want to get better. Honored to have your help!I’m sitting outside, resting in my walled garden, sipping tea. It’s our first sunny warm day in London—feels heavenly.“
Shelly brought her photographer’s eye and her writer’s heart to her poems. And she was as open and teachable as she claimed.
After I sent my feedback, she asked great questions:
I would love to learn why you broke up verses as you did on each of them. And how did you decide to break it up into three stanzas? I don’t have the poetry intelligence to create architecture in that way but want to learn. No rush. Just my random thoughts. I’m wondering if this is something intuitive for poets or learned by experience.
No, it’s not intuitive. We all learn by doing. And Shelly learned quickly.
I have taught several workshops and helped many people with poetry, but I always enter with trepidation. Poetry is such a personal art. Shelly was taking a big risk, sharing with me. How would she respond to my feedback?
“I had to laugh when I read your sweet encouragement about coming into my voice and shorter being what I need to lean into. Laughing with God because your words were a sacred echo.I feel like being concise and clear has been God’s choice of spiritual discipline for me for at least a decade. It’s all leading somewhere and I’m grateful to be a student, but sometimes it can also be frustrating. Thanks for being part of that process. I am learning a lot each time we have these exchanges.“
I learned a lot too. Writing about spiritual topics is hard to do well and definitely not my area of expertise. Shelly showed me how it might be done with full faith and love and without sentimentality.
She came later to poetry, but after reading my book, The Joy of Poetry, she began incorporating it into her life, especially on her Sunday sabbaths. She deeply loved the poems of Wendell Berry.
When Shelly told me my book helped get her into poetry, I started sending her poems. She always responded.
But when she was diagnosed with a massive sarcoma, I debated what poem to send her. Finally I chose one from John O’Donohue’s To Bless the Space Between Us, “For a Friend, on the Arrival of Illness.” At Chronic Joy, I wrote about choosing the poem and Shelly’s response. (Although I didn’t say it was Shelly. Somehow I hoped she’d get better.)
There is one stanza of O’Donohue’s poem that makes me think of Shelly’s brief and intense journey with illness:
May you find in yourself A courageous hospitality Toward what is difficult, Painful, and unknown.
Shelly found that “courageous hospitality” and shared it with everyone she knew. Yes, the news that her cancer was terminal hit her hard. But when asked for prayer requests, she asked for simple things, like to be able to enjoy her food, to sleep well, to share good moments with family and friends. She went quickly. She went in peace.
Shelly Miller — our rest mentor — is now at rest.
Next week, what Shelly’s book meant to me. And to read last week’s post on my visits from a Shelly-bird, click here.
Published August 11, 2020
An update: I wrote this post about Shelly Miller, who passed away November 1, 2020. She had given me permission to share her name, but I was hoping against hope that she would somehow get better. She already knew what she was facing and was already facing it bravely, showing us the way.
In June, Joy Harjo was chosen as the new U.S. poet laureate. I’ve spent the month getting acquainted with her poems, which are unlike any others I’ve read.
This poem was written after reading and journaling through her poem “She Had Some Horses.”
The Horse
He got some disease but before we could figure out what
it was he ran off, at the solstice. If he could’ve talked, he
might’ve said he’d had enough of us, was joining the wild
mustangs. But he was no mustang, and the mustangs knew
it.
He didn’t know how to find shelter, didn’t realize horses
don’t kill to eat, like raptors, or scavenge, like coyotes.
Found no pillows in the wild, no blankets either. Never
patient, always a runner, he ran on, through the sepia
landscape, learning absolutely nothing as his tail swished
behind him.
Back at home we debate: What could we have done?
What should we not have done? Each bit of news of him
pierces us. Not in the heart (it is long grown cold) but in the
retina, retelling ever thing we see and have seen of him.
We never talk
We talk all the time.
No, I mean talk, talk
Well what do you want to talk about?
I don’t know, just talk to me
I been talking to you for forty years.
You don’t concentrate when you talk to me
How much do you have to concentrate to talk?
That’s generic talk. It don’t count.
You want name-brand talk?
No, just talk, health talk, horse talk, I don’t care.
You want to talk about the horse?
If the horse is important to you, then yes, I want you to talk about it.
Not really. S’just a horse. I could talk about my guns.
God no. No gun talk.
Well I give up then. I never talked so much at breakfast in all my life.
You been talking so much you’ve hardly eaten a thing. Want more coffee?
Sure, ‘m all talked out.
Fine..
Published May 17, 2019
