Maya Angelou passed away at age 86 after a full, colorful, vivid life. I never met her, but this poem came to me after I heard of her death on Wednesday. With all that is being written about her in celebration of her life, here is my offering:
5/28/14
Maya Angelou
1928-2014
And the day came
which some had feared
more than anything
and some looked forward to
the end of human suffering
the end that is also a beginning
and how the birds are singing!
Margaret Dubay Mikus
© 2014
May is my month, with my birthday, Mother’s Day and my wedding anniversary. As a 62nd birthday challenge I wanted to get something unstuck: post my first video on YouTube. I’ve had a channel since 2011 and I would almost do it, but pull back. Always some snag. How to do the recording on iMovie? How to load the video? It felt too personal or too exposed, or laryngitis, or not enough time, or the need to wear makeup, or whatever…. Over the last few years, partly through Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir, I became more confident of my ability to do tech stuff. I got a Blue Yeti microphone –which is the coolest– to record VC 3 and VC 4.
My office recording set up
I made the light that Jack Rowland recommended last year. I learned enough of iMovie to submit my video for the last Virtual Choir. Thank you also to Gene Waddle and Elisabeth Smith and “the team” for your encouragement and to the worldwide family that is Virtual Choir.
Thank you to Tom Prasada-Rao and Cary Cooper for their bravery in posting very personal and moving songs. And to Charlotte McDaniel who keeps on learning and posting her lovely video creations. You all inspired me to make the leap.
I’ve had some recent clarity about my job: to deliver the poems that come to me. At first it meant reading in person and in print, then on a CD, and now on video, where the words can reach someone and help to heal, inspire, comfort, give voice to an experience, encourage, support, connect with.
I am very excited to tell you: here is my first video, I Know That (song version). Originally published in my book, As Easy as Breathing, I wrote the poem in the middle of chemotherapy, when losing my hair was imminent, a very big deal. (I also sang this on my CD, Full Blooming.)
I did lose my hair, but not my eyebrows. And I was grateful for that. My aunt (in the song) had just died of breast cancer and my dear Grandma had also just passed away. I had recovered from surgery, then began chemo, with radiation to come, as was the standard of care then. I was trying to not get pulled down by the losses and to stay focused on healing.
So here goes: A New Beginning.
Thanks for being there! What creation have you been putting off? Go to it!
Sun Through Orchid © 2013 Margaret Dubay Mikus
I have been excavating my desks, the downstairs desk in the kitchen for the house, my upstairs office desk for work. Coming out of an extended time when stuff was saved in piles; I don’t even remember what is in them. A number of discoveries so far, including this poem from 2011 (office desk).
Why I printed it out, I don’t recall, but it’s part of a series of heartfelt poems about giving up poetry after 18 years of writing my poetic journal. And then a poem comes along and I write and somehow keep on. Maybe with a slightly different trajectory or letting go the results.
Just write. See what comes of it, if anything. And the writing itself is the goal, as much as anything is. To be myself, with myself, the words call and I follow. As I must.
What is your equivalent? What insists and calls you? What is most important?
12/3/11
Abrupt Clarity
When I said
I give up on writing
I meant it.
And I meant
I give up on struggle
it is too hard
and I meant it
when I said
it is sad, but not devastating,
not the end of the world
just all I had been building.
And you took it to mean
what it used to mean
coming from my old lips
and cautioned reflection
and wanted to change my mind
or calm my thinking.
But
I was right,
what is past is done
as far as setting out
my unsustainable future,
it is too hard
and I am giving up
on hard in my life.
Does this mean
I will not put words to page?
apparently not, for here they are
again,
restlessly leading me on.
And when the call came
last night at 3AM
and I thought my son
was wandering lost
in the cold, too far for my help,
there was an abrupt clarity
about what is important to me,
what I can do and not do,
what I have to let go.
Margaret Dubay Mikus
© 2011
Take advantage of the Smashwords.com Summer/ Winter Sale for 75% OFF my award-winning book, Letting Go and New Beginnings! This makes it $1!
Go to https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/39211 and enter coupon code SSW75 at checkout. (Code is also in the right column of the book page.)
Supports those who are going through any kind of transition, and aren’t we all! This sale is only on during the month of July, so don’t wait. A great time to check out other Smashwords authors while you are there.
“It’s the story of loving and letting go, the bittersweet feeling all parents feel, all people feel when our cherished ones start to move on. I found the poems to be beautiful and timely—mirroring the transition I find myself in now—letting go, new beginnings. I also love how the imagery of the photographs expresses and compliments the intentions of the poems.
Karen Gottlieb, archetypal consultant, fabric artist, co-owner of International Galleries, and mother of two daughters
Cutting our wedding cake…. Copyright 1974 MDMikus
Today is the 39th 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, Main St., Ann Arbor, where we got our wedding bands. Copyright 2010 MDMikus