I never met my maternal grandfather. When he died of a stroke before I was born, my grandmother found in his wallet a poem clipped from a magazine. The poem was “Remember Then” by Daniel Whitehead Hicky. Under the circumstances, the first stanza was prescient:
If you should come upon my skeleton
Blanching in marsh or sand
In some far year no calendar now
shows,
Pity it not, but touch it with your
hand
As you would touch a bird’s wing
or a rose.
How long had my grandfather been carrying that poem? There was mention of it to my grandmother, that I know. Her note, attached to the poem, reads: “In Daddy’s billfold when he died. He had clipped it because he wanted some discussion of its meaning.” My grandmother passed the poem down to my mother. My mother kept it among her own clippings, which I would pore over in secret as a child, the room drumming with that particular silence afforded by the absence of adults. Not long ago my mother gave the poem to me.
I have placed it among the things I consult whenever I need to write. It has always been like that for me. Especially when I feel as if I can’t possibly write, I turn to things that stir the same part of my mind that writing does. Letters from my childhood best friend. A striated stone I found in the River Liffey. An Orthodox icon of my late father’s, Christ’s hand raised in benediction. I spend some moments among these items, and then I return to my writing. This process, I’ve found, is more productive (and far less masochistic) than staring at my blank laptop screen. I used to scold myself for getting “distracted” in this way, but I have learned that dropping into a discursive space is precisely what spurs my storytelling.
It’s a kind of gathering up. Gathering up treasures, thoughts, inklings of past lives. My grandfather’s poem even encourages an imaginative gathering up—a bird’s wing, a rose—when faced with the verity of death. There is, of course, a poetic history here, too: These fragments I have shored against my ruins. In my case, the practice feels distinctly genealogical. I imagine my grandfather slipping the poem into his wallet, his sense of its meaning, the joy and anguish of its potential. And how there the poem was, at his fingertips, when he needed it the most.
Andrea Bobotis, a native of South Carolina, received her Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Virginia, where she was honored with the All-University Graduate Teaching award. She teaches in the Lighthouse Young Writers program.
“Resolution Write” is a blog series offering writing tips from Lighthouse faculty and members. We’ll feature posts throughout January to inspire writers who’ve resolved to make 2015 a productive and successful writing year.
