Category Archives: hope

Another Day

4/14/20

Another day
another news briefing
depending on who says
the weight of it all
heavy or heavier
in the daily fog
of uncertainty

I am choosing
and again and again
to mostly not listen
not in denial
head in the sand
but in determination
to not drown

Margaret Dubay Mikus
© 2020

Every day trying to find the balance between knowing enough, but not too much. Perhaps you too?

Amanda Palmer: Song in Progress

10/18/17

Amanda Palmer: Song in Process

what do you most fear, part 2

Every fear
ever invented
is stuck in
someone’s throat
as if
everything is darkness

All the fears
loneliness, isolation
not-enoughness
the doom of the times
we seem to be in
and yet…

on the good days
we breathe
on the good days
sun shines or rain
falls on the wild fires
on the good days
we can sleep and wake
before we remember fear

And the bad days
we all have
we won’t speak of here
but to acknowledge them
as part of universal life

As I scroll down this list
of over a thousand comments
not reading each word
but blessing each
vulnerable human

who took the time
to write on the chance
it would matter
to someone reading
or someone praying
or someone writing a song.

Margaret Dubay Mikus
© 2017

IL Route 22, Sept. 2017, copyright MDMikus

Dinner with Geary–Connecting through Poetry

7/24/17

Dinner with Geary

On the good days
what comes between here and there
the before and after, now and then
the necessary transition
the clarifying calm after the storm
the personal and the political
is messy but manageable

On the bad days
fear overrides all good instinct
kindness mistaken for weakness
brute control at any cost, manipulation
mistaken for power and yet…
even here in abject darkness
a sliver of light, or a crack

that lets light in or a smidgeon of hope
What kind of question opens the door
to the path, not laid out in advance
but created new under each separate footfall?
Why tell you this—or ask you
to consider not losing hope, not despairing?

We are each a dot in a context
a deliberate point in a pointillist painting
It is the context, the perspective
I offer for consideration

And we are each a universe entire
autonomous yet connected in a web
of strands seen by some, felt by others
maybe you are one, if what you once knew
when you came here has not been pounded down
If you can still recognize what is true:
We were made for these times

To remember, hold to beauty, inspire
Not as in human cold marble statues
of superficial shallow perfection
but embodied spirits, warmly human
unwitting gods of creation, fragile and powerful
at least a bit willing.

Margaret Dubay Mikus
© 2017

In looking for something else, I found this poem and realized I had not heard from my friend, Geary, in quite a while, since we had met for dinner at a favorite Thai restaurant. I realized I had not sent him the poem that came out of our conversation. I decided to email it to him to check and see if he was ok. He got back to me right away and had quite a story to tell. As he said, once again our lives were in parallel. Here is this poem for you too. What has inspired you lately?

Chicago Roof with Pigeon, by Margaret Dubay Mikus, Copyright 2012

Expanding the Possibilities

6/5/20

Expanding the Possibilities

I am responsible.
I am one who said to the Universe:
“Let the Truth be known”
and now Truth is spilling out
all over the place.
Voices being seen and heard
that had long been silenced.
Except by the Truth-averse
of which there are many
maybe diminishing.
In this time of chaotic
tumultuous upheaval
Love steps forward to help, to serve
Fear continues acting from apparent self-interest.
And to the Universe I now say
“Let Love transform Fear
with all necessary reassurance.
Let deep healing of chasms begin…
and soon please. Thank you. Amen.”

We are One
standing in shadow, in sun.

Margaret Dubay Mikus
© 2020

I “heard” the opening lines of this poem for a week or more before I was willing to follow them and see where it took me. (The original title was “I Was Reluctant, This One Insisted.”) Some poems come to me easily and even intact, in their final form. Some, like this one, come slowly over time with words that shift and new lines that come out after several weeks of patiently checking in and reading the poem aloud over and over. In this case, once the poem was finished, the title no longer fit and I sifted through many possibilities before this one settled.

Thank you to those who read it or listened, encouraging me that it was good enough to let it go.

These are extraordinary times of upheaval, with great potential for lasting change. What we do with this healing opportunity, each in our own small ways, is our responsibility. For me, writing and releasing poems is part of my contribution, however small. Perhaps this poem speaks for or to you or someone you know. Please share it you think it may help.

Peony from My Driveway, Margaret Dubay Mikus, Copyright 2007

How Life Changes Sometimes—the surprising backstory for “The Vision: A Fable of Our Times”

Read poem here          Listen to poem-video

In April, 25 years ago, I healed from multiple sclerosis and then left my job teaching in the Biology Department at Lake Forest College. I didn’t know where my life was going from there, but I had a wispy notion that it involved music and healing.

For 8 years I’d been singing alto in the Waukegan Concert Chorus (WCC). Our conductor was going through a rocky period and I wanted to write something to support him. I tried writing a letter, but nothing came together.

That summer, my husband and I were listening to a Chicago classical radio station and heard about a concert that night at Ravinia, a nearby popular outdoor music venue. This concert was Montserrat Caballe, a Spanish operatic soprano we had not heard before. We got two inexpensive seats on the lawn.

As it turned out, the people around us were more interested in talking than in listening to the music. Frustrated, I went and stood behind the pavilion where I could see her performing. She sang Spanish folk opera in a lighter voice and then for an encore, three classic opera arias. The hair stood up on my arms. I could feel the full power and heart connection of her singing. I thought that the healing vibration of the notes would soak into even those who were not paying attention.

At home, as I was doing my nightly stretching, getting ready for bed, words began lining up in my head, “There was a Teddy bear tall and true who sat on a throne…” The words felt very compelling, but it was late. Still, I thought, if I don’t write them down, they’ll vanish. I got up from the floor and began handwriting in a spiral notebook, several pages in all. There were gaps I left blank where I knew something was supposed to go. I worked on the piece for a week. Although I was interested in writing, I had never done anything like this before.

On a sunny Saturday morning I knew the piece—a poem—was done. My heart beating fast, I went outside and asked my husband if he would listen to it. He said poetry was not really his thing, but agreed to listen. I read it to him and later to my voice teacher, Kip Snyder, who was the vocal techniques coach for the WCC. My voice lessons were in the room next door to my conductor’s office. Kip treated my poem as if it was a normal thing that people did. And we talked about how I wanted to present the poem to my conductor.

I wanted him to hear the poem the way I had heard it. I had a boom box with a REC button, so I got a blank cassette and gave it a go. The first time through my reading was too fast, the second time was a more conversational pace, about 5 minutes long.

Since the poem is a fable, it takes place in another world. I wanted to indicate this so I tried printing it on various illustrated papers and played with fonts. I chose one with misty pine trees on the side and a kind of medieval font. I also got a Teddy bear (on sale at Kohl’s) that was very dignified with a plaid bow. And I wrote out the story of how the poem had come to be.

When I gave it all to my choral director—the poem on special paper, the cassette with my reading, the bear, and the handwritten account—I asked him to sit and listen to the recording before reading it.

It was several months before I heard back from him. He burst into my lesson one day (which had never happened before). He was very happy with the poem, etc. I was so surprised I later didn’t remember any details of what he’d said, only the feeling. It was as if a lightening bolt went from his open heart to mine. It was quite astonishing.

As it turned out, he did stay with the chorus for another couple years (including the year I had treatment for breast cancer) and he then left the WCC. Shortly after, I also left.

At the time, I thought that someone might illustrate the poem—like a children’s picture book—and with the recording, it could be sold to support the chorus. Instead, it sat in my computer for all these years. Every so often I would think of doing something with it, but nothing ever happened. Shortly after I wrote “The Vision,” I began a poetic journal, writing poems with a healing intention. With my first cancer diagnosis had come more writing and more healing. And life moved on. I continued writing and the poems became the core of my new life, with greeting cards, books, recording, a workshop series, a website….

Why bring “The Vision” back now in this strange, chaotic time? At first, I wondered if I could even find the poem. I didn’t have the word processing program to read it on my computer any more, but a written copy was in my office files and I retyped it in.

I didn’t know if I would still like it. The writing style is very different from almost all my other work. Twenty-five years of practicing writing craft and living life led me to write in quite a different voice now. But as I read the poem and got to the end, I knew I had to let it go out into this world, at this particular time, to do what healing was possible from the divisiveness and harshness of today. “…Then the world could be changed / based on love and not fear…”

Recently I asked a number of people to read “The Vision” to get their feedback and ideas. Thank you so much to Melissa, Midge, Carol, Mary, Crystal, Marie, and Carol! Your positive comments encouraged me to take the leap and let this poem go. For now, it is a blog post and poem-video. I am working on a chapbook illustrated with my photos.

So…25 years ago, with this first poem, the writing, the recording, the visual, the design of the “whole” was all laid out, as I followed my heart’s longing and healing intention. From not knowing what direction to take, with just a wisp of an idea, my new life began. Weaving these poems used all aspects of me, what I thought, read, felt, experienced, what stories I was told or my own stories, all of my life, no parts left out. And the writing could then go out and help others, my dearest wish. It all began with this one poem and following an inner prompt to write it and let it go.

We can all be of service in various ways, however large or small, during this extraordinary pandemic time. What is your role to play? What has your heart been longing to do? Tell me your story.

Read poem here              Listen to poem-video