Grief and Advice to Myself by Louise Erdrich

I have read and own every book written by Louise Erdrich.   My good friend, Angie C., turned me on to her with a copy of "Love Medicine" many years ago and I fell instantly in love with her writing and mesmerizing storytelling.  Her novels stay with you long after you finish reading them and the poems in the volume pictured above are all amazing.  Ms. Erdrich has an old soul and a heart overflowing with hard-earned wisdom and a deep love of language. 

I share two of her poems below.  I've posted "Advice to Myself" here before, but it bears repeating.  It's a perfect poem for the new year.  It's cold down here in the bayous and swamps and I am a total wussy about the cold.  I know my friends up North (as in Canada) are laughing their asses off at me, but we just do not get this kind of cold down here....in the teens with wind chill factors in the single digits.  (Global warming, my ass!!)  My only hope is that it'll kill off our mosquito population for once.  (One can always dream.....LOL!)  I wish you all love, a warm fire and a good book to read. 

Love & Blessings,

 ~Marion~

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Grief

By Louise Erdrich

Sometimes you have to take your own hand

as though you were a lost child

and bring yourself stumbling

home over twisted ice.

Whiteness drifts over your house.

A page of warm light

falls steady from the open door.

Here is your bed, folded open.

Lie down, lie down, let the blue snow cover you.

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Advice to Myself

By Louise Erdrich

Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic-decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in though the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.


~From: "Original Fire: New and Selected Poems", page 149