Category Archives: encouragement

For a National Day of Celebration

Written for and read in Grant Park (Chicago, IL) at a gathering for National Cancer Survivors’ Day following my first healing journey through cancer treatment. Thank you to all those on my healing team!

For a National Day of Celebration

I have healed from cancer,
I am a cancer thriver.
I have sucked this
sometimes bitter mint,
sometimes sweet,

and have grown
from the knowing
of its juices.
I have learned of love
that can’t wait

and I have chosen
and accepted healing
in all my aspects,
not just the body.
My mind and spirit
called out in need

and I have answered.
I cried out for help
and have been showered with it.
My relationships are healed,
my life is healed.
I am most blessed.

It is my continuing choice now
to remember what I know
and let this flow through me
to others in need.
We are all chosen
and marked for this task:

that our healing should
radiate out from us like
a stone skipped on the purest pond,
to gently and powerfully
heal all we find.

There is no going back to our old lives;
for a thriver the healing continues,
to learn again
how to laugh from the belly,
how to sing with full voice,
how to dance your socks off!

Margaret Dubay Mikus
(c) 1997

From As Easy as Breathing

Love and Only Love

This poem has been in my head lately as a reminder that no matter what struggles are going on with my body, to send it love. It is doing its best. A good way to start a new year.

Love and Only Love

Love with every stroke of the shaver,
with every lather of soap, slather of lotion, love.

Not impatience, not frustration, not disgust
at varicose veins, sags, wrinkles, scars,

but love,
with every look, every caress

at the power, the strength,
the beauty of this body in my care.

Love with every glance in the mirror
every wry smile, every tear.

Love, love and only love.
Yes, other thoughts slip in,

let them slip out,
no recrimination, no justification.

Love with every stroke,
healing in my touch, breath

and blink of an eye.
Love, love and only love.

Margaret Dubay Mikus
© 2007

From my poetic journal

Fireworks, Copyright 2014, M D Mikus

My Lawrence Ferlinghetti Story, part 2

Some poems insist on being sent to the one who inspired them. I try to follow that impulse, but sometimes I lose track. My poem, “Ferlinghetti Speaks,” was one of those. It was written in 2002, but I didn’t send it to him until 2014.

The push to send it was his 95th birthday and the sense that time was running out to do it. Probably urged by my voice teacher, Kip, I emailed City Lights Booksellers (begun years back by Ferlinghetti in San Francisco) to see if that was the best address to send my poems inspired by him. The staff got back to me in 1 1/2 days: “Yes, if you send them c/o the store, they will be passed on to him. Thanks.”

Encouraged, I wrote a short letter and mailed it with the two poems (the one below included). I did not hear back, but that wasn’t the point. I did what I felt strongly I wanted / needed to do and that was enough. I wanted to tell someone that they inspired me, that who they were or what they did or wrote mattered, enough to take my time to tell them.

I felt so strongly about this, wanting to avoid regrets, as alluded to in this poem, because of previous experiences when I waited too long. So here is the second poem I sent to Lawrence Ferlinghetti, part of my honoring his passing.

3/25/14

Someone Posted on Facebook

Lawrence Ferlinghetti is 95 today
and I never did send him that poem he inspired
by his inspired reading in Chicago that day
that turned the compass needle sideways and
the streets in the Loop ran in perpendicular directions

no lie
until things settled down out of the long shadows
out back in the sun, back in touch
with the ground and the somewhere blue sky.

I considered sending him the poem
considered writing the back story
even tracked down the San Francisco address
of City Lights Booksellers
but each time I talked myself out of it

intimidated maybe
or not high enough on the crowded list
or waves of life knocking me flat sometimes.
You would think I’d learned after Vonnegut’s death,
and Susannah’s, how the good ideas, the kindnesses
left undone are the things later that haunt you
not every day, but sometimes.

Margaret Dubay Mikus
© 2014

From Thrown Again into the Frazzle Machine

The poem, “Ferlinghetti Speaks” is in My Ferlinghetti Story, part 1

Steep Street to the Bridge, San Francisco, Copyright 2007, Margaret Dubay Mikus

Prompted by Blake’s Question

4/5/20

Prompted by Blake’s Question

in this time of mandatory stay at home

For Stephen

We do what we can
to laugh, to love
to live another day.

And when we learn better
hopefully we do better.
How have you and I stayed

together 48+ years—still friends?
Once the question is out there
I’ve been thinking back

to the roller coaster
our constant notes written and left
to find, funny, sometimes thoughtful

sometimes informative, touching base.
The times we might have split
but worked through it

the relentless medical challenges
job stresses, raising two kids
personal growth, changing, not always

in perfect parallel aligned
“and if I fall behind, wait for me.”
But here we are together

almost half a century after that first January
when we sat side by side in the front row
the first day of a college literature class

had our first conversation of countless many.
Here we are still interested
still laughing, watching out for each other

still loving.

Margaret Dubay Mikus
© 2020

From my poetic journal, a reminder that this week (Jan 17, 1972) is celebrating 49 years together. The quote is a reference to a Bruce Springsteen song.

Unexpected Wave, CA Beach, by M D Mikus, Copyright 2013

After the Wave, taken by Stephen Mikus 2013

Only Me, Only You

Only Me, Only You

If
you tried to write these poems
you couldn’t and
if I try to write them
I can’t, but
if I let them flow through me
mix and meld with my life,
deeply still and listening
allow the pen to move
with the words that come…well then.
But
if you
let the words flow through you
you will write in your own voice
not mine and it will mix and meld
with your unique perspective and experience
creating your poems, so
Don’t…
try to
copy anyone
Let, allow, flow
with what message
only you can deliver.
What we’ve been desperate to hear.

Margaret Dubay Mikus
© 2017