Poetry Post for the End of the World*

because ART...

What are you all up to at the End of the World? I just ate another slice of cinnamon toast that I made on Saturday with the discard from my sourdough starter. I was mighty proud of that bread. I’m dusting the shelves where the photo albums sit because I grabbed a bunch of them during the Great Fire a couple of weeks ago when we thought we might have to evacuate. I’m slowly putting all the stuff back where it’s been for over 23 years. There’s a lot of dust. I also wondered whether I’d have to do it all over again — get ready for the End of the World. I was going to tell you how strange it is to look around at all one’s possessions and not really know what to take. Especially in the heat of the moment or in terror. I had a bunch of photo albums in a huge old LL Bean bag, and my three children’s baby books, along with a weird selection of jewelry, including my signet ring I got when I made my first Holy Communion in 1970 and a tiny sapphire tulip ring that my mother wore with two others (that my two sisters now have) on her ring finger but which doesn’t even fit on my pinkie. I had also thrown in some small spiral notebooks I used as journals during my UNC days. I froze in front of the shelf that has my favorite childhood books (my original copies) — Half Magic, The Hobbit, The Little Princess, The Secret Garden, the tiny Golden books, the mass paperback editions of all four Lord of the Rings — and my favorite Books of All Time — To the Lighthouse, The Brothers Dostoevsky, Emily Dickinson Complete Poems, William Butler Yeats Complete Poems, Wallace Stevens Collected Poems, a tiny book of poems by Li Po inscribed by a boy I loved — but didn’t grab them. Along with a change of clothes, medication and, of course, Sophie’s already assembled go-bag, I couldn’t think of anything else.

I’ve always told my kids that Armageddon is a continuous thing, that it lives in the minds and memories of people who’ve suffered incredible loss and endured mind-blowing tragedy forever. I’ve also told them that doing the right thing, no matter if one “wins” or “loses” is an imperative for me — or, at least (because we all do stuff that we are ashamed of or feel remorse for), something to which I always aspire.

Be not afraid, all sorts of angels have said.

I’m also digging around for all the poetry that sustains me when horrible shit is going down, like today. Create art in the face of f*#k, my friend Lidia Yuknavitch says, or something like that. Let’s keep writing and reading and making art.

Here are some good poems — a couple that I read over and over, particularly during hard times, and the rest random, I guess, just ones that I thought of, that I like and hope you do, too. Poetry is where it’s at.

“The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry

“A Brief for the Defense” by Jack Gilbert

“My Life had stood — a Loaded Gun (764) by Emily Dickinson

“Yellow Glove” by Naomi Shihab Nye

“Immense and Inclined to Pulse” by Kay Ryan

“The Collar” by George Herbert

“Antidotes to Fear of Death” by Rebecca Elson

“The Big Picture” by Ellen Bass

“Questions About Angels” by Billy Collins

* Please know that “the end of the world” is certainly not now, although it can seem like it. I like hyperbole, I like capitalizing words, I have a dark sense of humor.