Hello, Friends! I hope you are seeking out some soft moments this Sunday. At the end of another full semester (and year) of teaching theatre at Emerson College - one full of both deep joy and keen pain - I am doing my best to balance wrapping up grading and also leave some room for much needed unwinding.
In the course of some small pockets of downtime this past week, I came across some advice on writing on Instagram that absolutely set my mind and body on fire. Of course, the quote is now nowhere to be found, so let me reconstruct it as best I can: “Write where it’s warm. Follow the heat.”
How gorgeous, how true, is that?
Can’t you feel that instruction viscerally?
I’ll be stowing that away and feasting on it for the foreseeable future.
I know I’ll soon have some more time to follow the heat, and share more reflections with you in due time, but the itch to dive in headfirst to the fire right now is strong. As Marmee says in Little Women, “I’m not patient by nature.”
I have so many future posts brewing, and my brain and heart are absolutely itching to get started on all kinds of essays to share them with you right away. My physical self - worn out and weary - has different ideas about how to spend this evening, and in the spirit of trying to be more faithful to my body when she tells me she needs rest, I am tending to myself today, and doing my best to be patient about all the things I want to share with you soon.
For now, I’ll need to be satisfied with winging my way into your inboxes to briefly share some news that is making my heart glow.
On June 20th, the Summer Solstice, I’m publishing my fourth poetry collection, Take Me to the Thin Places. I’m happy to say that Take Me to the Thin Places will include many of the poems I’ve shared here on Substack, all bound in one place (as some subscribers have requested), as well as several brand new poems. I’m so excited! I’ll be sure to share the link to purchase as the release date nears.
In the meantime, here’s a sneak peek at the title poem of the collection, which I’ve only shared as part of a longer essay for paid subscribers last year.
I’m signing off for the moment to tend to my current somewhat messy garden-of-a-life. I am learning to trust that once weeded, it will bloom beautifully. Take good care.
Take Me to the Thin Places
Keep your chilly chapels and perfumed wine -
these places, these props, are too bulky for me,
scramble the signals
edit the epistles,
and like an eclipse, obscure what lies
just beyond
beneath
the Here.
Take me to the thin places:
the handholds well worn by
all the souls
the seekers
the speakers
who roamed wild before
with
mud stained, holy fingers
like eyes gazing,
groping in the dark,
skin sliding over the seafoam green moss,
reading the earth like a map
of the mind
as their pilgrims' feet
find their way across the galaxies below their soles,
the light of their lanterns falling faint
against the luminousness of the lighthouses within their own chests
ready to guide us back to the places
we were told to leave.
What if (what if?)
breath
and sweat
and saliva
are the only relics I need reach for
and
what if (what if?)
supplication isn't required
but devotion could be redefined by
the willingness to wend your way,
unadorned
by the scrolls of scripture,
your bones lit from within,
walking ever onward towards your own truth,
unaccompanied by hollow hymns,
and
what if (what if?)
I dare
to mark time
by the inner ticking of my own heart
tuning it to
"the big, good thing" (as Frances liked to say)?
Would my sacrament be turned away?
Would my gift go unopened?
Will I really burn?
Let me glimpse my ghost
being baptized in the slice of silver
on a moonlit midnight,
take down the marble tombs
men have made
to keep my ecstasy safe
(from whom?)
and
instead
wind up her stained glass wings
whose symbols tell the story of my eventual escape,
and
drenched in technicolor,
set her flying into the coal black night sky,
a comet in her own right.
"...these stones will serve you...." Thomas recalled.
I'll wear black no more.
That's so exciting! I don't know when you find the time to write so much, but it's very inspiring. I can't wait to see the new collection:)