Hero's Poetry Journey, week 13

RETURN: Crossing the Threshold Again

Hello, Poetry Friend

Remember the first time we crossed the threshold with Emily Dickinson? We have to cross it again to get home. What was hard and dark is still hard and dark, but we know the way. We can cross as many times as we like. Any night. Every night.

Crossing the Threshold Again

My friend Callie Feyen wrote a version of Psalm 4 in which she remembers a graduate school professor admonishing the students to “Turn out the lights! / he said, “Make it darker.” Though I wasn’t in that class, I have followed that advice.

When my journey got dark, I turned out the lights and made it darker: Walking in the dark became a spiritual practice. Yes, the night is dark, but I am not. I walk the streets burning.

How will you find your way across the dark threshold you have to cross again? By making it darker.

Light, take your time.

Motherhood Shifts

Even if all was well between me and my children, we have reached that natural stage in our journeys in which we live more separate lives. They have their partners, their work, their friends, and I have mine. The grace of getting older is that I sometimes get other opportunities to mother.

One of those unexpected opportunities is at a women’s drug and alcohol rehab center, where I deliver Eucharist once a month. I specifically signed up for the fourth Sunday since I am unlikely to have family obligations on major holidays. Crossing the cattleguard that leads to the facility has become one of my delights.

The women are young, many of them the age of my adult children. They are eager to see a new face, to participate in a short service even if they’re not Catholic. (My best Christmas ever and my best Pentecost ever were spent with these ladies.) They ask questions. They give hugs. They sing. One played guitar. For half an hour, we share the night.

“Come, Night” by William Shakespeare, from Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene II

Juliet calls for her Romeo. He cannot declare his love under the “garish sun,” so their love must wait for the “gentle night,” when love can shine in the darkness.

And so we find ourselves “in love with night.” It’s not the brilliance of day — no of course not. But it is stars. The night is “gentle,” “loving,” “black-brow’d.” Each morning I hope the sun will rise and turn everything right. Each night, as sky deepens into black, I surrender with Juliet. Come, Romeo. come, come, come.

Although Romeo and Juliet ends with their deaths, their love lives on, some 500 years after Shakespeare wrote this play. Loving is a superpower that enables us to leap tall thresholds in a single bound. Even when it hurts like hell.

Poetry Journal

• Read Shakespeare’s poem. Jot down what you notice, what you like, what you don’t, what questions you have, and at least one way in which the poem speaks to your soul.

• Write about what night means to you. What does it mean to cross a threshold again?

• Read Shakespeares' poem aloud. Pick one phrase or line or stanza you can tuck deep in your heart.

• Write your own poem about this stage of your hero’s poetry journey. (Mine is at meganwillome.com.) If you like, email me what you write.

Happy Poeming!

Megan

Shhh! A poetry course is a’comin’! Registration is open at meganwillome.com. More Dave Malone poetry coming to Poetry for Life later this month, to get us ready to meet storms with words.