Slow Twitch

<p>Tillie Olsen said It is a long baptism into the seas of humankind my daughter. Better immersion than to live untouched. It has taken me years to consent to that baptism. Writers who have helped me along the way have been Yeats Emily Dickinson Dylan Thomas Richard Wilbur Linda Pastan Mary Oliver Billy Collins Ted Kooser and Naomi Shihab Nye.</p><p></p><p>When I understood that my penchant for expecting the worst had blinded me to my capacity for joy I found poets to show the way. Barbara Hamby's Thus Spake the Mockingbird was a revelation. Jack Gilbert's A Brief for the Defense became a survival manifesto and Ross Gay taught me that actively seeking delight was a worthy occupation. I read Charlotte's Web and The Wind in the Willows every year or so. I grew up on the cadences of the King James Bible and around grown-ups who could still recite poems they learned in school. When I first started writing I had the illusion that if I could just find the right words people would take me seriously and do what needed to be done. It didn't work but it gave me the satisfaction of figuring out what I thought.</p><p></p><p>I lived my first 60 years in Texas where people talked in colorful idioms moved to Kansas with its own sensibility and now live in Nashville. As an octogenarian who lives alone I see how unlovely and lonely life can be. Fortunately I have a family consenting to their own baptisms and I live in a community of cohousers and friends I've gathered over the years. I need other people but I also need that space in the morning when I can be alone with that Presence who blesses me and helps me find the words to express it.</p>