Writing Faithfully

nine months of writing with me and Callie Feyen

Hello, Poetry Friend

Callie R. Feyen

, self-proclaimed “fairy godprofessor,” recently shared her version of a true fairy tale titled "The One Where The Fairy Godmother Helps Cinderella And Cinderella Helps Her Back.” (The link contains excerpts. If you become one of her paid subscribers, you can get the whole magical thing.) It’s a very Callie sort of writing exercise, one that pushes you out of your comfort zone to write something you never imagined.

Beginning in September Callie and I are co-teaching a nine-month intensive online course called Writing Faithfully. It will be filled with exercises that push.

Writing about faith can take many forms. It might be as straightforward as poeming a Psalm. Or it might include giving your testimony through a fairytale.

My life underwent a massive shift in 2019, when I became a cantor at St. Mary’s Catholic Church. I keep writing and rewriting the story of this change that has made me more me. When Callie invited to write it as a fairytale, I immediately thought of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Nightingale,” because it is about a singing bird. And then one of my poetry sites linked to Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale.” Layering details from my life into the fairytale, with a sprinkling of Keats’ words, allowed new truths to emerge — ones I would never have discovered without a push from the nest.

The One Where the Nightingale Showed Up and Stayed (sort of)

with help from “Ode to a Nightingale” by John Keats

Beyond the Texas hills, beyond the Rocky Mountains, beyond the Great Lakes, deep in the coastal woods lived a nightingale, dryad of the trees. She used to sing, down at the end of the road.

She didn’t think anyone listened. She thought they had ears in vain. She was wrong. Lots of people listened. They walked past with their dogs, slowly, to hear her pour forth her soul. But no one told her she sounded beautiful. They could tell she was too shy to hear such praise.

One night she ventured into town, to a piano bar, lured by the instrument’s sweet sound upon the midnight. She was too young to be in such a place, but the man seated at the piano was playing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” and she couldn’t help herself. She sang. He played along. He kept playing. She kept singing. People clapped. They grabbed their phones and videoed. They left money in his tip jar.

“Your voice is so beautiful! You are my nightingale!” he said, tears in his eyes. “Would you come again tomorrow night and share your song?” he said.

His words landed, took root. “It sounds best among the trees,” she said. But she came.

Before long she realized she couldn’t leave the man. Though he was neither emperor nor clown, he tied golden ribbons to her wings and she could not get free. He got older. Her song kept her young.

“Never stop singing!” he pleaded.

And so she stopped.

He tried bribes and promises. He raged, “Fled is that music!” He ignored. Our girl went quiet. The pianist swore.

Then he got himself an AI hottie — one who knew only one song, but it was mighty complicated and she did it perfectly every time. He hoped it would make the nightingale jealous, but she somehow went even quieter. One night, with the help of a mouse, she got free. Returned to her woods and her self-same song.

Only, it wasn’t. Now it was a high requiem — honoring the beauty and the hard of being truly heard. She knew she could no longer stay hidden. She did not know how to be seen.

Once he realized the nightingale wasn’t coming back, the pianist shrugged and drank another cup of tea. Cued up the same ol’ virtual hit (the tourists didn’t know the difference). Hit the cups hard. As he grew old and sick, he grew tired of relentless perfection. Eventually his eyes and fingers could no longer work music from the magic phone. In silence, he waited for death. The bar owner put out ads for a new musician.

Some little birdy — or mousie, I won’t say which — got word to the nightingale. She wanted one more look at the person who, though flawed, was the first ever bold enough to compliment her. She came by night and hid behind a branch while he laid there, wide awake, and once again, she sang.

His eyes opened in wonder. He sat up, scanning the dark. “What is the voice I hear this passing night?”

There she was, staring right at him. She put her wing to her beak and said, “Shhh. Don’t tell anyone I’m here. If you keep quiet, I’ll come back again tomorrow night.”

“Every night?”

“If you don’t tell.”

The man touched two fingers to his lips, kissed them, and extended them to the nightingale.

She returned and sang again the next night, as promised. And the next. He blew kisses, said not one word. Night by night, he grew stronger.

Then one evening, the bar was filled with excitement: The pianist was back! He was finally going to play! And he did. He played better than before he fell ill.

“You, sir, had a good night!” the bar owner said.

“Not at all,” the man said. “For reasons I cannot disclose, I call night my good morning.”

For the piano man, this was where the story ended. He knew the nightingale only as his. When she sang her evensong, he didn’t even notice how her music had changed But how could a song not change when the singer has traveled over the rainbow and back again? He never noticed that next door to the bar was a cathedral.

Happy poeming!

Megan