☀️ Staying Power #180: "Someones" (reprise)

Poetry helps make us someones to one another

Published on occasional Sundays, Staying Power is one of the newsletters of The Raft, the online community of author Phyllis Cole-Dai. We Rafters ride the river of life buoyed by music, poetry, and other arts, plus water-drops of wisdom. Most everything here is free, but patrons (paid subscribers) get some special perks as a gesture of gratitude.

The following poem originally appeared in slightly different form on January 2, 2023. It sprang from a tender moment I’d shared with my mother while visiting her over the holidays. (Mom passed away this October.)

Thank you for accepting these repostings of original material in lieu of new writings as I prepare to move from South Dakota to Maryland in early January.

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SOMEONES
Phyllis Cole-Dai

            Upon reading John O’Donohue’s “Beannacht”
             to my 82-year-old mother at Christmas

I sit with her on the edge
of her bed, one arm tight around her
shoulders, wire holding her together,
reciting for her the Irish blessing
a friend had sent her with a note:
Ask your daughter to read you
this poem when she comes to visit.

That handwritten request
had slipped her memory, 
the hand-copied poem too.
But after our hugging,
she'd given me the basket
stacked with her holiday mail,
wanting me to know everything
about everyone she knows,
even those souls she's forgotten.

I'm reading the poem aloud
like a small loaf of bread,
feeding its bits of lines
to the eager mouth of her life.
She keeps leaning in.
She prefers poems
with rhyme and meter.
This blessing has neither,
but she hears its music
in the love of my voice.

It means so much more
when someone reads it,
she says when I’m done,
and at this late hour
I’m glad to be her someone,
as she is someone for me,
knit together 
by words being spoken,
broken open 
by words being heard.

---

Poetry has the power to make us all “someones” to one another.

Last week I invited you to read a poem to someone you care about and, if that someone was agreeable, to snap a picture of you together, then send it to me via email (phyllis@phylliscoledai.com).

Here’s a photo from sisters Ginny Hartman (l) and Sharon Kraybill (r), the latter of whom was recovering from eye surgery.

There’s no expiration date on this invitation. Nor a limit on how many photos you may send me. I’ll add your image(s) to a photo gallery of Rafters Who Gift the Reading of Poems.

Let’s lend poetry our voices. For the sake of those people who need it.

The Gentle Nudge

• ANYTIME: Lay a blessing stone here. (Learn about our blessing-stone practice at this link.)

• THURSDAY: Poetry Pick-Me-Up (Zoom, 12:00-1:00PM Central, at this link)

• TODAY: “Calming the Heart” patron bash with James Crews (Zoom, December 15, 6PM CT).

• TODAY: Final day of my 50% off Thanksiversary sale! Details here.

• THRU 1/31/25: Write a cento for a midwinter cento celebration. Details here.