The Sweet Heat That Roils ‘neath My Heart

Redefining Ambition, celebrating the summer solstice with a pair of brand new exclusive to Substack poems, plus a birthday discount

Summer solstice eve spent at Orchard House, where a fuzzy bumblebee greets a larkspur

Welcome to my new subscribers - it’s been so lovely to see this space expand a bit over the last month - I am so happy to have you here!

Today I’m offering a couple of brand new poems to mark the summer solstice, but first a few bits of housekeeping news…

Annual Substack Paid Subscription Sale:

I’ve had a few folks reach out to inquire about any upcoming paid subscription discounts, and yes, I’m excited to be offering my annual birthday month discount on annual memberships to The Perpetual Visitor this month! In honor of my 42nd birthday this month, anyone who becomes a paid subscriber will enjoy 42% off a monthly or yearly subscription, which includes three exclusive paid posts a month and first news of special events (in addition to the one free monthly post for all subscribers). The discount link is good through June 30th, so if you have been wanting to subscribe and support in this way, I hope this invitation is a welcome one for you.

Happy First Book Birthday to Take Me to the Thin Places!

June has been buzzing by, much like the fuzzy bumble bees I’ve met in the roses and larkspur this month, and it occurred to me this week that it’s been a whole year since my fourth poetry collection, Take Me to the Thin Places, was born. I am so thankful to everyone who has purchased a copy, who has reached out to me to share a specific poem that has stuck with you, and who checks in to ask me about the process of scribbling and self-publishing. If you are interested in a copy, you can purchase it here.

May I also ask a favor? If you have already purchased Take Me to the Thin Places, might you take a few moments to leave the collection a review? Reviews help to make the collection more visible to new readers, and I’d be ever so grateful for your generosity that way.

Now that those things are sorted, on to the poetry…

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To help meet the summer solstice, I am sharing a quickly scribbled verse from just this morning. It is inspired by the notion of ambition, something I have been reflecting on lately. A lot. Truth be told, I can’t stop thinking about it.

Ambition can feel like a dirty word to some, and admittedly, I’ve changed my mind about it many times. Is ambition admirable? Does it mean that you can’t experience peace and equanimity? Does it mean you have sold out to worldly desires and deeds? And on and on and on.

While I’m not advocating for the “Boss Babe” / hustle / grind mentality, I have realized that recently, acknowledging and embracing the ambition that burns in your heart is, depending on the company we keep, met with a sense of resistance and even righteous condescension, from ourselves and from others.

Does Ambition make you shallow? Does it mean you can never rest? Does it mean you are never satisfied?

I don’t believe in striving to keep up with others, barely able to breathe for the weight of the pressure to perform.

I won’t advocate for chasing a yearning that didn’t grow from the soil of our own soul.

I can’t support burying yourself in the ground over what you went after with every cell of your being and didn’t receive (as much as the heart breaks).

Yet, I will not abandon Ambition - never. For so many of us across the vast canvas of history, ambition has been unavailable, forbidden: tucked quietly into pockets, carefully covered on a back burner, bubbling away under the guise of our daily bread, but in actuality, rising in temperature until we consent to either care for it once and for all, or let it burn.

I’ve been watching the Apple TV series Dickinson and happily heading down rabbit holes to learn more about the remarkable Emily Dickinson herself. When researching one of the poems featured on the show (a verse that borrowed my breath with its beauty), I discovered that Emily Dickinson wrote and reworked the following poem over the course of twenty-five years:

These are the days when Birds come back –
A very few – a Bird or two,
To take a final look –

These are the days when skies resume
The old – old sophistries of June –
A blue and gold mistake.

Oh fraud that cannot cheat the Bee,
Almost thy plausibility
Induces my belief,

Till ranks of seeds their witness bear,
And swiftly thro' the altered air
Hurries a timid leaf –

Oh Sacrament of summer days!
Oh last Communion in the Haze –
Permit a Child to join –

Thy sacred emblems to partake –
Thy consecrated bread to take –
And thine immortal wine –

How gorgeous is that kind of relentlessness?

What kind of patience must one weave to continue on in the daylight and the dark, mining the heart for something honest, even if for your eyes only?

Emily never strove to publish; in fact only ten poems and one letter of hers was published in her lifetime (out of almost 1800 poems).

If this is not ambition, I don’t know what is.

Possessing a zest, a desire, a feral need to wake up each day and sift through the sea of words and ideas and colors and places and people and dreams and impulses, even when their irregular edges could cut you with the risk of the mosaic you make, is all.

To want is human.

To imagine is holy.

To need to express is elemental.

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Untitled Ambition Poem

Admirable as smooth cool pools may be,

glazed gray like stone -

*

Keep them.

How many have drowned below such ordered oceans?

*

To those who mistake the blue blaze I hold for a weapon:

I will not make an enemy of Ambition,

refusing to surrender the sweet heat that roils ‘neath my heart

once entombed like Etna

melting all that is measured

tamping down the tepid

feeding all that is wild

with a unquenchable searing red

as it rolls forth, never to be put away.

*

To those who confuse hunger with hedonism:

I will not take arms against all that pulses under my skin

with wanting

and making

and moving

and shaping.

Do not listen when They tell you

your demands ring shrill and shallow, are short-lived.

Turn.

Take to the tower

yank the bell

over and over and over until your arms ache

and your muscles catch fire

do not cease, until (even when?)

the sound of your pealing cracks the confines

throttles the rocks

tosses hurricanes through the air like dervishes

teases the trees into talking,

giving up their secrets like sap, all the more sweet for the freeze.

Until all is unbuckled, are we free?

Go on. Howl.

*

Do not relent when they leave,

Those who would let you believe

that to long is to fail

to have faith in those whose hearts don’t beat is to divorce reality

Oh - don’t!

Enter into matrimony with the goddesses that beckon you

take my word: no devils lurk here,

only fleshy fruit ready to slake the thirst you have for truth

in this Eden.

Loosen the bolts on the doors of your senses

gorge yourself on the spit-roasted words

you speak through sticky lips,

feasting on all you were warned was Forbidden,

and swim deeply in the sea of We,

Light to be.

*

Copper keys twist in the lock

a noseful of metal

blood on the tongue

fingers clammy, curling

my Self lurks like a hunter

a loaded gun

ready

to crack with life.

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Poem number two…