From Bliss to Blah

My new year's goal was supposed to be such a simple one: BLISS, NOT DREAD. That wasn't too much to ask, was it? Just a daily dose of bliss, preferably from writing something brilliant and beautiful?

But then my husband died... and I got a devastating book rejection that made me think maybe my career as a writer is over, and maybe I'm okay with that, except not really okay... and COVID lingered and lingered, and winter lingered and lingered. 

I did find joy in launching my online graduate Ethics and Children's Literature course at Hollins University, where teaching is the closest thing the academy offers to a total love fest. I enjoyed working with three aspiring authors through the mentorship program sponsored by our local chapter of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. And I adored taking part in poet Molly Fisk's Poem-a-Day Facebook group, where I did succeed in writing a poem from one of her tantalizing prompts every single day for the whole month. So hooray for that.

Still, my life has more "blah" than "bliss" in it right now, and I'm not in the mood to make heroic efforts to do something about this. I'm too tired. I'm too sad. I know I'd perk up considerably if my agent sold the rejected book somewhere else, but that's something outside my control, so I'm trying not to check my email more than every five minutes to see if there is good news on that front. I'd also perk up considerably if I bought myself a ticket to Paris for a post-COVID jaunt (and I do get my first dose of the vaccine tomorrow). But it feels like tempting fate to expect the world to open up to accommodate my travel plans.

So I'm just going to - well, not embrace blah, but accept it for now. There are worse things than blah. I know that as well as anyone.

Here, as my farewell to February, three poems from this month's harvest, one silly and two sad. Maybe a month in which I wrote twenty-eight poems in the company of wonderful fellow poets wasn't such a blah month after all.

The Tunnel’s Lament

Few slow down

to linger by me,

feelin’ groovy.

When times are rough,

I am not their chosen refuge

from troubled waters.

Hart Crane ignored me,

effusive though he was

on certain other subjects

I prefer not to mention.

Those traveling to Terabithia

look elsewhere

for their means of passage.

I can go to nowhere, too,

you know.

I can occasion sighs.

I’ve been crawled through,

collapsed in to.

When will I be loved? 

Self-Pity

 I think of her in the third person,
my younger self. There she is,
 
in girls’ chorus, singing her heart out
for a boy who will never love her back.
 
“More than the greatest love the world has known….”
“Love, look away….”  “Softly, as I leave you.”
 
And I think, she doesn’t know, she has no idea,
that she’ll someday marry someone else,
 
and the marriage will be so hard, so hard,
but she’ll stick it out somehow to the end,
 
to the part where he dies alone
in a nursing home in the midst of a pandemic,
 
and she’ll try to make peace with her grief
by listening over and over again
 
to a You Tube video of Eydie Gorme
singing “Softly, As I Leave You.”
 
And I feel so sorry for that girl,
my heart breaking with pity for her,
 
and maybe a little bit
of pity for me, too.

On This Last Day of February, Almost Two Months Since Your Passing

 

Despite everything, I got out of bed this morning.

Instead of merely making the bed, I yanked

off the covers for laundering, and they are

tumbling in the dryer now. I walked the dog

for half an hour, putting on his sweater

as I do in freezing weather, for warmth

as well as for added adorableness.

After tidying the kitchen, I scrambled myself

two eggs with cheese and sauteed onions

and peppers and let the dog gobble up

what I left behind on my plate. Soon

I’ll take that plate and fork downstairs

for washing, too. Today is another hard

day. But maybe tomorrow will be better,

this new month with its vernal equinox,

the coming of spring, crocuses budding

beneath the snow, sap rising in the trees,

new life stirring somewhere, etcetera, etcetera,

and if not this month, maybe the next one,

or maybe the month after that.