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by Barbara Abercrombie, author of The Language of Loss: 
Poetry and Prose for Grieving and Celebrating the Love of Your Life

My husband wasn’t very interested in poetry. He never read it and didn’t see how it connected to his life. Then one day I read him Mary Oliver’s “The Summer Day” with its famous last lines, Tell me, what is it you plan to do/ With your one wild and precious life? When I finished reading, I saw he had tears in his eyes.

Later I got us tickets to a poetry reading Mary Oliver was giving at UCLA. My husband was amazed that Royce Hall was packed, every seat filled. “She’s just going to stand up there and read her poems?” he asked me. The excitement level was akin to a rock concert. And like a rock concert, when she began to read, her fans nodded and lip synced, applauding their favorite lines written by this modest, understated woman in her seventies, who, yes, just stood up there and read her poems. Vanity Fair later compared Oliver’s stage presence to Madonna but without the backup dancers. “She dazzled,” wrote Nell Scovell.

Seven years later one of my daughters read “The Summer Day” at my husband’s memorial service. My other daughter read Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Kindness” – Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,/ you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing –

In the months after my husband died, all I could read was poetry. I couldn’t concentrate on prose, but I needed the bones and breath of language to anchor me in this world. I wanted to read deep, I wanted to read something that cut to the chase. Grief isn’t linear and neither is poetry – the leaps of language, the metaphors, the heart race of something so true your breath catches. The swerves and sharp turns of good poetry felt like the path I was on through grief. I needed to fill up my soul, but I didn’t want soft or sentimental. I wanted truth. And I wanted to read poets who had also lost a spouse or a partner and could make meaning out of the grief I was feeling. I wanted company.

And now during the dark, strange days of the summer of 2020 I’m reading a lot of poems again. Poetry fits the times. Garrison Keillor wrote in the preface to his anthology Good Poems for Hard Times that poetry is for people in a jam. And aren’t we all in a jam right now? Just the tension of walking down streets keeping six feet away from each other, the masks, the angry politics – can poems lessen the tension, draw us closer to one another, give some meaning to this chaos? Or maybe poetry we love can simply draw us deeper into what’s really meaningful in life, make us sit up and pay attention to it.

The famous line about loving each other from W.H. Auden’s poem “September 1, 1939” keeps running through my head: We must love one another or die. Eighty years later that line reverberates more than ever.

In a new anthology of poetry on the subject of the pandemic, Together in a Sudden Strangeness, Julia Alvarez writes a poem entitled “How Will This Pandemic Affect Poetry?” and in it she asks, Will the lines be six feet apart?...(Will) (each) (word) (have) (to) (be) (masked) (?) At the end she asks, What if only poetry will see us through?

In the same anthology, Ron Koertge writes in “Elder Care” about the 60’s music playing in a market during the senior shopping hour. Shoppers looking like robbers in our masks and gloves. We sway above our sturdy shoes. And then with their carts they inch closer, smiling in case somebody even under the circumstances wants to forget/why we’re here and dance.

Last week I joined a Zoom group at a church streaming a discussion of the intersection of poetry and theology, and learned about Lectio Divina – an ancient Catholic prayer practice for reading scripture. Using this method in the Zoom meeting for a poem, the leader read the poem four times, and four times we listened to it, looking for different ways to connect with it. Reading, meditation, prayer, contemplation.

The poem was “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver. With its evocative lines addressed directly to the reader much like she did in “The Summer Day”: Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine, the poem elicited a conversation in the Zoom meeting about the important questions in life, especially now. What to do about the loneliness we feel? Where is home, where do we belong?

In the New Yorker in 2019, Rachel Syme wrote that Oliver’s poems were not about isolation, but “about pushing beyond your own sense of emotional quarantine even, when you feel fear.” She wrote this over a year ago, and now in the pandemic we’re struggling with physical as well as emotional quarantine. The silence and stillness required to read poetry, the solace of reading poets who put into language the complicated contradictions of existence, the ideas and hard questions that good poetry confronts us with might just see us through.

Where is home? Where do you belong? What do you intend to do with these wild and precious days?

Barbara Abercrombie has published over fifteen books, including The Language of Loss. Two of her books were listed on Poets & Writers Magazine’s “Best Writing Books of the Year” list. Her personal essays have appeared in many national publications and anthologies. She has received the Outstanding Instructor and Distinguished Instructor Awards from UCLA Extension, where she teaches creative writing. She lives in Pasadena, CA with her rescue dogs Nelson and Nina. Find out more about her work at www.barbaraabercrombie.com.

The other night while my husband was asleep on the couch, I did some energy work on myself. I try to do this a couple of times a week. I brought light all around me and asked my angels and guides to join me. I finished the energy work and then sat back to watch some television. About an hour later, one of my husband's figurines fell from the top of the bookshelf, and then a minute later, the DVD player just shut itself off. Did I bring this on, or did one of my angels or guides do this for attention? A couple of days later, around five a.m., my husband was already up and I was in a half asleep/half awake state. I was having a dream that I was looking out a window. Then in my dream, I felt arms coming around my waist and giving me a warm hug. This woke me from the dream, and I realized that somebody was actually hugging me while I was lying in the bed. I wasn't afraid; I just assumed it was one of my angels or my guides. (I ask them to be with me at all times.) There have been other times while I'm lying down meditating, quietly reading, or doing energy work, and a being will sit down on the bed beside me and touch my hair or stroke my face. I can feel the mattress move from their weight. I've never felt any fear from this, but I have stopped telling other people because it really freaks them out. My husband wants to hear nothing of this, as he's afraid of an evil entity pretending to be a guide. Can this be normal behavior for guides and angels, or is my husband right in believing that it could be something that I can't handle?

- S.

Astrea:

Of course it freaks other people out when you talk about things like that because they don't understand and don't know how to process that information. Our guides and angels struggle to come through to us because many people can't or won't accept the existence of metaphysical entities. People are afraid of what they can't see.

However, if those of us who have these experiences don't discuss them, how will we ever know what's going on in the World beyond the Veil?

I never try to define so-called normal behavior for guides and angels, but what you describe seems to happen to many people with your level of awareness. Many people describe the feelings you have.

Some talk about how they feel enclosed by angel wings. Many times when I'm driving, I'll feel a hand on my shoulder that causes me to slow down or change my route.

Often people feel that a loved one who has crossed over is letting them know they're all right with that kind of caress. Sometimes these entities are able to manifest visually for us, but most often, we feel what is going on more than we see it. Connecting with guides and angels can be tricky business, but most of the time goodness comes through.

I'm sure in this specific case that you and your husband needn't worry about something horrible coming into your house and sticking around. I feel pretty safe in assuming that this force works for GOOD. I'm sure you do plenty of protection work to prevent any kind of evil entity masquerading as an angel or a guide from entering your home or your personal harmony.

One of the big rules of all positive energy work is protecting yourself when you start. That's one of the first things we learn when we begin to chase the Light. It's true that sometimes Evil can come through meditation practices accidentally, but it's pretty rare. People who know what they're doing are fairly immune to Evil.

Besides, while this isn't always the case, Evil likes to be invited. Evil is lazy, and it's easier to work with the willing.

For safety's sake, do a little more protection work every now and then. Your husband should trust you to be careful. Since fear of the unknown often opens doors to things he wouldn't like coming in, he would be wise to assume that you know what you're doing, and certainly aren't inviting evil in.

Just take care and everything will work out fine.

*****

Susyn:

Your question raises some interesting ideas. It's true that there have been cases of entities pretending to be friendly, only to turn into negative presences later. However, the fact that you are praying to and asking for your angels and guides to surround you makes it unlikely that these are negative forces you are dealing with.

Had you moved into a different house or been practicing witchcraft or strange spiritual incantations or methodologies without awareness or spiritual consciousness, you might very well have invited in spirits of a malevolent nature. However, these negative entities rarely come near those of us who begin our meditations and conscious energy work by surrounding ourselves with divine light.

Also, since you make a habit of specifically inviting your angels and guides to join you, they are already present and would be the first to alert you if a negative presence appeared.

People who don't understand these processes, like your husband, will often carry a lot of fear about the events you describe. It's always wise to be mindful of what happens after your energy work, but if these are negative spirits, it won't take long for them to start creating trouble.

A change in your demeanor or your husband's, increased arguments, negative thinking and depression are signs that you have invited a negative entity into your life.

On the other hand, if your guides and angels are showing up for you, you'll experience lightness of being, a more positive outlook, and a sense of greater protection and inner peace.

You mentioned that a figurine of your husband's fell off the shelf after one such session. Keep in mind that it's possible that there is some spirit that is attached to you and is targeting your husband because it feels jealous or possessive of you.

If you continue to notice that whatever is involved is specifically moving his things about, or if it starts interfering with your relationship, you'll have to be firm with it about his importance in your life the next time you have contact.

Don't be concerned because your husband and other people have reacted negatively to these occurrences, but do be mindful of who you share these events with. There are still many people in the world who find the idea of contact with the spirit world frightening or threatening. However, unless you yourself have negative experiences with these entities, I doubt there is anything to fear here.

Astrea:

Many times in life we hear, "You will always have what you NEED, but not necessarily what you WANT." Your spirit must have needed to experience the feeling of leaving your human body, and the suggestion in the next chapter of Sylvia Brown's book was all it took to get you there.

Even though you hadn't read it yet, your SOUL recognized the title of that chapter as something it had been seeking, and your soul, knowing that you had that reference to read after your experience, got with it and out you went!

While I don't usually recommend her books, Sylvia Brown has a wide reaching and powerful effect on lots of people. A Gemini like you would be able to relate easily to her writing and put it to good use. Synchronicity - you gotta love it!

I like your description of "getting caught." That's exactly what it feels like, isn't it? One minute you're free and hovering above the room, and the next minute, ZAP! back down into your corporeal form you go!

As a little kid, I loved that "feeling of return." With practice, most of the time we can control that event, but sometimes, when our physical ears hear a distracting noise or something else occurs to knock us back into reality, back we go. With practice you will be able to control your return better.

I find it interesting that you were visiting your mother-in-law and not someone in your own genetic family. Evidently, you and your husband got married for reasons that are even deeper than love. His family's interest in "psychic stuff" will nurture your children in such matters and help them to grow into their own abilities.

You'll never have to be concerned that when your daughter visits them, she'll be discouraged from exploring her own psychic life and power. My parents encouraged me to develop my psychic senses in a time when it wasn't nice to even discuss such things in public. Heck, it's STILL not considered a great topic at the dinner table in some families!

Your kids will get to talk about it ALL and ask questions and read and study. This is going to give them such an edge in life! Talk with your husband about how you want to present this to your kiddos, so that you are united in your approach and ready to tell them their experiences are all natural and okay.

A word or two of warning: Geminis often have difficulty staying grounded in REAL LIFE. Don't get so strung out on your ASTRAL life that you neglect what you're doing here on Earth.

You are at the beginning of a long journey to learn where your power really lies. Try to be patient with this process and take your time.