Deepening our Connections      

I was well into middle age when I encountered poet Richard  Wilbur’s “Advice to a Prophet.” In that remarkably imagined poem, the speaker provides a scene of our planet devastated and destroyed by human ignorance and irrationality, a poetic imagining of a nuclear winter. He longs for a modern version of a biblical prophet who might deter us from the ultimate holocaust.  But he advises that the prophet not speak to us in scientific or numerical terms about the devastating power of our weaponry– or even of the unimaginable ultimate death of the human race.  Rather he suggests the prophet describe a planet robbed of the powerful magic of nature’s wonderous ability to stir our hearts and minds and thereby understand ourselves better, telling us:

That the white-tailed deer will slip
Into perfect shade, grown perfectly shy,
The lark avoid the reaches of our eye,
The jack-pine lose its knuckled grip

On the cold ledge, and every torrent burn
As Xanthus once, its gliding trout
Stunned in a twinkling. What should we be without
The dolphin’s arc, the dove’s return,

These things in which we have seen ourselves and spoken?
Ask us, prophet, how we shall call
Our natures forth when that live tongue is all
Dispelled, that glass obscured or broken.

The poets of this issue who wrote on the theme of animals and healing understand the value of a deep connection to animals, the pets we love as family members, or the larger animals, such as horses, who serve us in a variety of ways. Lucia Owen, in “School Horse,” shows us how a young girl is transformed over the years by the patience of the horse who is responsible for her learning how to ride. In “Bobbi, I am Healing,” Hadley Dion recalls how her cat taught her to let, “something impermanent and dependent  / sink its claws into [her]” and how mourning Bobbi is teaching her resilience and the power to discover permanent connection in the cycle of life and death as she welcomes another cat into her home.

And I love the way Lisa Licht in her deceptively simple “Animal, Human, Tree” makes it clear that  showing compassion to all creatures in Nature is a vital (planet saving?) act as she nurses her dying pet: “Earth rights itself / for darkness / I wait / to carry him / in case it’s what he needs.” Nature holds the power to regenerate and heal, but not if we are oblivious to the  “live tongue” that needs us to notice, learn, and empathize before we damage it, and consequently ourselves, irreparably. In “Care Cure,” Joe Cottonwood shows us in a humorous tone, how doing something simple, taking the  omnivorous dog Oak, on a “last” car ride actually saves him. Again, the world of Nature is at times surprisingly resilient, but needs us to co-operate, to act to exist in harmony with it. Judith Skillman in both her poems, suggests there is mystery at the heart of existence, but with good humor the speaker in “The Shrew,” looking upon the somewhat comic appearance of the splayed out dead creature, reveals her need for companionship–or is it independence–or both. All these poets avoid maudlin self-indulgence but do, in many ways reflect reality: our pets have the ability to literally lower our blood pressure, to calm us and comfort us; and other animals we view, from a greater distance, provide a window on the magnificence and variety of Creation, a panorama of life showing us that we are never really alone, no matter how often we may feel we are.

Of course our personal feelings of loneliness or low self-esteem or anger, or the countless other demons that can plague the human mind, are also addressed in this issue by the poets who wrote for The Mental Health Awareness Contest. Many of their pieces realistically create troubling psychological states we recognize. Whether you have experienced them yourself, seen them manifested in others, or have the requisite empathy and respect for the complexity and, too often, the perplexity of human nature.

The winner of the MHA Contest is Darcy Smith for her poem, “Community Room Memorial.”

The several poems we have included by Smith across both themes are worth studying for her skilled control of different tones and the variety of speakers she creates—a kitten, a therapist in her first week on a psychiatric ward, and an addict. She also uses and varies set forms, such as the sonnet, the haibun, and the duplex. See her informative footnotes to learn more about those forms. Her knowledge of  poetic tradition shows through in the addict’s voice of “Redeemer, Make Me Your Obedient Blood Hound”: “Gimme a short run Jesus, tie my craving. / Cinch my line, leash me to recovery.” After you read that, find 17^th Century Metaphysical Poet John Donne’s “Batter My Heart, Three Personed God.”

The runners up in the MHA Contest were David Icenogle, Grace Downey, and Ally Campanozzi. Their poems are also remarkable and worthy of close reading, but let me close now with the inspiring lines of Icenogle in “Arts and Crafts on the Psyche Ward”:

In art therapy
sometimes what’s inside us does come out
and it’s beautiful.
Sometimes the clay is smashed
so that with careful hands
it can become
a sculpture of hope.

We hope you will be encouraged by all the writers of this issue, and renewed in taking actions that preserve and lift up, first of all, yourself–and then others in need of compassionate actions—whether human or animal. Whatever our different beliefs, on our best days, doesn’t life feel like a gift of love? Let us respond in kind to support and sustain life in all its varied forms.

–Steve Granzyk, Poetry Editor

Steve Granzyk is the poetry editor of Please See Me.