Drew Myron heads a marketing communications company and as a journalist has covered news, arts, entertainment and travel for AOL, Northwest Best Places, and other publications. She leads writing workshops for low-income and homeless youth, is the creator and host of "Off the Page” an annual reading event, and is author of Thin Skin, a collection of poems and photos. She lives on the central Oregon coast. www.drewmyron.com
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Click on book cover to buy Thin Skin.
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UNLESS YOU
visit the dark places, you’ll never
feel the sea pull you in and under,
swallowing words before they form.
Until you visit places within you
cloistered and constant, you will travel
in a tourist daze, wrought with too much
of what endures, depletes.
If you never turn from light, close
your eyes, feel the life inside, you’ll leave
the church, the beach, your self,
knowing nothing more.
Unless you are silent, you will not
know your urgent heart, how it beats
between the thin skin of yes and no.
“Unless you” is the
winner of the 2010 Spirit First Poetry Contest, and published in Moments of the Soul: poems of meditation and
mindfulness by writers of every faith.
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WHAT THAT MEANS
The nine and ten year olds do not squirm but sit fixed
when I read The House on Mango Street.
After small, dank places, Esperanza wants to stay in the
clean new house with hot water and nice neighbors.
Dad says it’s temporary, she says, and I know what that means.
My father said the same.
Temporary, code for Don’t get attached.
Oregon, California, Colorado.
One apartment to another, house after house,
each offered seeds of an ordinary life with telephone,
television, sleepovers where I wasn’t embarrassed or afraid.
Temporary, I heard, when mom didn’t
come home, when dad moved out, and later when I was lonely, breathless, broke.
Maybe he was prepping me for a life of stalled desires and
tough spots. Maybe he was convincing himself.
What is temporary?
I fumble.
It means not forever, I say. Just for now.
The others nod, each of us knowing too much.
“What that means” published in Thin Skin, Push Pull Books, 2013.
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EROSION
In memory of Bart Myron, 1909 - 2004
Who knows how
the mind files memory?
missing pieces, your
history, this life, lies
three states to the south --
lost rusted cars, bindweed
decay in the sun
wild geese fight winds
that rattle shingles, shake doors
your vacant eyes sort
through weeds, neglect
memory somersaults
lands against antelope
bones blanched in desert heat --
futile to search for data:
the face of a son, the hand of the wife
price of wheat, words
any words to rise, rescue us
from this wait
this long silent loss.
“Erosion” published in Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose about
Alzheimer's Disease, Kent State University Press.
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WRITER'S TIP: Read, read, read. Good writers are voracious readers. Before
I write, I always read — a line, a page, a poem, anything that will set a tone,
evoke a mood. Listen for cues, for texture, for those small but powerful triggers
that will stir your own words. Then,
stop thinking and start writing.
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