Stray Poems

I was sitting in my car, on the way to lunch after doing some volunteer neuters at the county animal shelter (Note to self: kittens are way too cute. That's how they sucker you. Must resist all cuteness, for the dogs are plenty of trouble already.) And I happily caught the daily "Writer's Almanac" on NPR. Now some may not like Mr. Keillor (My stepdad has never been a big "Praire Home Companion" fan, finding it too saccharine, but I have always been an unashamed enthusiast. First of all, it's funny. Second of all, I'm a sucker for folk music. I am also sometimes a sucker for saccharine. And truthfully, the show also reminds me of my father, who died when I was eleven. It's a small connection through the years to his character and his life.), but I confess I brighten to hear his quiet and measured voice making connections to history. And, even better--there's POETRY. I'm hopelessly hooked. Today's poem hit me just right; the kind of moments where I involuntarily exclaim or grunt, as some image hits me in the literary solar plexus; quiet punches to the gut that have come to be my markers of a good poem. Grunt on, oh readers.

Advice to Myself

Louise Erdrich

Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic--decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in though the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.

Savage momentos indeed. I like that poems find you like stray dogs sometimes; you didn't even know you needed a furry greeting or a friendly tongue at home, but then one finds you and your days somehow become infinitely better.