Constant Craving

On Wednesday evening I guided a cross-country Zoom workshop in writing poetry to achieve peace. More than forty people registered, a demonstration of how eager we are to rid ourselves of the increasing emotional trauma of life in the new America. Academic research into immune system function has found that writing about stressful experiences is a kind of medicine. There’s not only science behind poetry as a way to well-being, but a dose of magic, too. The event was held under the sponsorship of a religious congregation, the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Peace. The sisters have developed a speakers’ program exploring how to cultivate peace within ourselves and then bring it to the world. The series is offered at no cost. The Sisters fund their outreach programs through donations. Each workshop, presentation, and retreat in the series features speakers from different backgrounds who bring insights into what it means to “be peace” in a way that transforms not only our own hearts but also our communities. The premise of my two-hour program was to show how what I call “healing poetry” can move us toward the kind of peace portrayed in Psalm 131 of the Hebrew Scriptures: Truly calm and quiet do you make my spirit, quiet as a fed child in its mother’s arms. We tend to read poems to console ourselves in times of adversity, I told the group. But it’s not often we write a poem to console ourselves. Julia Darling, a prolific British novelist, playwright, and poet who was taken by cancer at forty-eight, wrote in her anthology, The Poetry Cure : “Poetry is essential, not a frill or a nicety. It comes to all of us when we most need it. As soon as we are in any kind of crisis, or anguish, that is when we reach out for poetry, or find ourselves writing a poem for the first time.” Healing poetry, especially, lets us emerge from what one poet calls the “cave of self.” Writing this kind of poetry gives us somewhere to turn to express openly the emotional wounds we prefer to keep hidden. When we write, we find strength in our own words, which enables us to gain a sense of control over stress and anxiety – a first step on the path to peace. There is no greater exemplar of this, perhaps, than Wendell Berry, now well into his nineties, and his famous poem, “The Peace Of Wild Things.” When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. As a kid growing up in a gritty New Jersey industrial city, I never could have imagined where life would take me, leading me to suspect that maybe God does, in fact, have a plan for me. I’m grateful to have found this fourth career – first a journalist, then a corporate executive, then owner of my own communications agency – and now guiding people toward writing poems that help them feel happier and healthier. It’s my “old man project,” and my most rewarding pursuit. As famed author Thornton Wilder said, seniors need to stave off death through work – even if it’s work that no longer drives a career. Mostly, I’m just grateful not to be living in The Villages and playing pickleball.

I was in Manhattan last Sunday to attend the Metropolitan Opera production of La Boheme . I walked almost six miles through midtown streets that lovely Spring day, just reveling in the pulse of the city. All the while, I felt invisible. I’m technically retired. I don’t have “a job.” My material value is no longer recognized by way of formal financial compensation. So I have to validate myself nowadays through more spiritual endeavors, like writing and teaching programs in healing poetry. Where I was once the youngest in the room, I’m now the oldest. I suspect these are the early steps in my demise. All the people who mentored me are gone – teachers who guided me toward the pursuit of excellence, and the bosses who evaluated my performance. Friends and colleagues who navigated the currents of life and career with me are no more who were yo. Just last month another friend died, who was younger than I am. What it’s like to feel invisible? Women who in bygone days made eye contact with me when we passed on the sidewalk no longer glance in my direction. Of course not – they could pass for my granddaughter. The only ones who acknowledge me are waitresses, who call me “Sweetie.” When I was forty-one I ran more than twenty-six miles through the five boroughs of New York City. Now I automatically gravitate to the sides of subway stairs so I can grasp the handrails. Grown men defer to me in doorways and call me “Sir.” I assess the flashing “Don’t Walk” countdown to gauge whether I can make it to the other side of the street before the traffic light changes. I keep one eye on the sidewalk in front of me constantly, less my Joe Biden shoes catch a crack. Yet, all the while, my mind views the world as if I were a twenty-something, eagerly imagining how I’d look in the cool jacket that shop-window mannequin is sporting, or assessing if I can afford a Porshe like the one purring by, or assuming I can walk almost six miles without feeling it the next morning.. If you’re familiar with La Boheme , you might notice the plot has an uncanny resemblance to the cast of Seinfeld – a tight band of young men and a pretty girl. The men – a poet, a painter, a philosopher, and a musician – are just beginning their careers and trying to make it in their chosen pursuits. Why, at the sunset of my life, was I identifying with these guys last week and not with their elderly landlord? So that was my Sunday Funday in the city. Fully aware that nobody noticed I was there. Nor did they care one way or another. I felt already forgotten, as surely as if I were sealed away in my cemetery crypt. This is the latest version of me. An invisible man who wonders if my declining body even casts a shadow on the sunny side of the street.