Category Archives: gratitude

Virtual Choir 4: Bliss

I am greatly interested in the way creativity prompts and inspires further creative expression. I think we need more of that. Virtual Choir 3 and 4 (and Eric Whitacre, of course) inspired many poems for me. See links below for previous VC related posts.

In the last year I have lost five people in my immediate circle, including my Mom, whom I was very close to, and my youngest brother. In addition, my dear youngest sister is struggling with stage 4 breast cancer. (Now all four of us girls in my family have had cancer.) The year before both my in-laws died. So I am deeply grieving, trying to work through and process and let go and remember and listen to my inner voice and still take care of my health. For me, singing in VC 4: Bliss was filled with challenges and also huge gifts.

I was driving and began thinking about the many reasons I felt so compelled to sing in Virtual Choir 4 and the phrase “5 minute respite” came to mind. Since I am a poet I have a notebook in the car. I pulled over and followed that thought. The poem below is the result. (5 minutes refers to the approximate time it takes to sing the choir part of VC 4: Bliss once through.)

6/10/13

5 Minute Respite
(VC 4: Bliss)

To sing perchance to dream
when anything is possible
where irretrievable losses
can be restored and
hope refreshed

Melding what is best in each
welding strength to strength
assembled from
determined persistence
to overcome any barriers

Envisioned by the one
encouraged by the team
the whole more
strongly beautiful and real
than any sticky web

of pervasive grief.

Margaret Dubay Mikus
© 2013

Note: Definition of respite (pronounced ‘respit) in the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary: 1) a period of temporary delay, 2) an interval of rest or relief.

Other Virtual Choir (and Eric Whitacre) posts and poems:
https://www.fullblooming.com/inspiration-and-creation
https://www.fullblooming.com/a-dream-about-eric-whitacre
https://www.fullblooming.com/more-poems-inspired-by-virtual-choir-3-water-night
https://www.fullblooming.com/being-more-fully-yourself

More VC poems to come. What has inspired you lately? What did you do about it?

Anniversary

Today is the 39^th anniversary of our wedding. It was 1974 and we were 22 years old. I had just graduated from the University of Michigan three weeks before and Stephen had just finished his first year law school final exams one week before. It was a Saturday of Memorial weekend, just like today. That night we stayed at a hotel (the Dearborn Inn) for the first time in my life–a very mini honeymoon. And then we moved our stuff the next day into married student housing in Ann Arbor. In thinking back a few days ago, I wrote this poem which I read to Stephen this morning at the kitchen table. We had a lovely, low-key day being together. Happy anniversary one more time before midnight, Stephen!

5/23/13

Nearing Anniversary
(For STM)

I might tell you
what I remember
from 40 years ago

and though you were there
and we were simpatico
your memories may not be

even recognizable to me,
either morphed over time,
put through that gauze sieve

we each have or
true from your point of view
but maybe the image

has blurred or completely erased
and what mattered to me
enough to file away

just vanished from your life story.
Or we each can remember bits
and piece together say, that date the first summer

when we were supposed to go to a horse show
but ended up making out on the beach
and you remember the color and make of the borrowed car

or where we went for dinner after
and both of us recall the unexpectedly cold wind
blowing off the lake, the threat of rain

and I remember the insistence of your lips on mine
as we made our tent under the sandy blanket
and my passionate body awakened for the first time

like an iron slowing heating up to red hot
not an incandescent bulb you could turn on or off,
the abandon of desire almost scaring me with intensity.

Margaret Dubay Mikus
© 2013

What are your stories about long-time relationships? How reliable is memory? How can you tell?

Still there! Seyfried Jewelry in Ann Arbor where we got our wedding bands.

New Beginnings

2011 LGNB 95 smaller front coverD ebook for Smashwords-2 Just had a flash to offer my book, Letting Go and New Beginnings: A Mother’s Poetic Journey, for FREE for today only, the last day of Read an E-Book Week. Enter coupon code RW100 upon checkout.

When I was editing Letting Go and New Beginnings, I had the idea for my Mom to proof read it. She was struggling with a form of dementia from repeated small strokes and I thought this might help her. And it would help me to have fresh eyes read the pages. As a side benefit it caused me to think back to when she let me go, the first of her seven children to head to college.

On the day my parents dropped me off at the dorm, I was 18 and eager for them to leave and to get on with my new life. With six other kids at home I did not really consider what all this meant to my Dad and Mom, the hole I might leave. Working on the book with my Mom opened a conversation about her feelings when I left home forty years before, giving me new insights.

Here is another poem from Letting Go and New Beginnings: A Mother’s Poetic Journey

1/11/06

Seasoned Woman

Seasoned like a succulent feast
with spices both wild and ordinary,
used in unusual, unexpected combinations,
rich, complex, sweet, sour, simple, bitter-bite,
surprising, challenging the senses, satisfying.

And seasoned like wood now ready for good use,
waiting to be crafted into
something of great beauty and value,
an exquisite table polished to mirror sheen,
a hand-carved boat lovingly left deliberately rough,
a delicate or sturdy figurine shaped
from an almost remembered dream.

And seasoned by the flow of days,
some hard beyond bearing:
what doesn’t break you
makes you stronger.

Young, green, soft-wood no good for burning,
seasoned hardwood ready for flame.

Margaret Dubay Mikus
Copyright 2006

I also read this poem on my CD, Full Blooming: Selections from a Poetic Journal.

On Sale for Read an E-Book Week

Starting Sunday, March 3 — for one week only — you can buy my award winning E-book, Letting Go and New Beginnings: A Mother’s Poetic Journey, for only $1.00! That is 75% off the normal low price. Go to https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/39211 and enter coupon code REW 75 at check out.

For parents letting go of their children or anyone working on letting go for any reason. “Words from the heart and photographs that complement the poems beautifully.” Pramod Uday

Good Grieving

There are many things I am grateful for in all this and I try to remember the love that surrounds me. I have a lot of support and many healing skills, but I am just barely coping. Each day I try to sleep and eat and take care of myself, but I feel like a huge weight has crushed me flat, like one of those old cartoon characters that is steamrollered into a paper-thin version of himself. I know from experience that this is part of the grieving process and it will get better over time. Every day I keep on.

As I was slowly trudging to an appointment with my holistic doc earlier this week, some words came into my head: “I feel I weigh six hundred pounds, with shoulders bowed and feet of lead….and walk through mud.” And I thought: that is exactly how I feel. Oh wait, I wrote that…years ago. It is one of two poems in my book, As Easy as Breathing, that I think of as “the good grieving poems.” I wrote these at another time when life knocked me flat. And writing saved and healed me.

First I want to share a short recent poem. For the last month, as she declined, Mom and I could no longer have our weekly phone conversations. I felt her presence nevertheless. These insistent lines came out of that space between dream and waking My Mother’s Daughter) that I complied for Mom’s wake, to share with family and friends as my contribution in celebration of her life and our connection.
7/13/12AM

She is quiet
she is still
she is peaceful

she is getting ready
to walk the long tunnel
ever grace-filled.

Below are the two “good grieving poems” from my book, As Easy as Breathing: Reclaiming Power for Healing and Transformation—Poems, Letters, and Inner Listening

Back to the Living

I feel a dreadful sadness
of losses overwhelming,
one on top of the other,
no chance for breathing
in between. No re-balancing

as waves hit from the blue,
knocking the breath out
and feet out from under.
For a time water comes into
lungs…and there is a peace in this,

but no life. For a time
floating numb. Then salt
mixes with salt and body
begins to right and cough
and sputter back to the living.

Who Can Shine Such Light

I feel I weigh six hundred
pounds, with shoulders bowed
and feet of lead.

I see through salt water
and walk through mud.

The mud that clings I fear
will never wash away
by no matter how many tears.

Even so…there is a wisp of smoke
that may vanish, whispering, “feel this
too…fully…and then see

the other side.
Release what must be
to heal from wounds old and new.
The lightness that will come

from this unloading
will be miraculous.
People will be drawn to this one
who can shine such light on darkness.”

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