Don’t Blame Billy Collins
Welcome to the first installment of Writings in the Raw.
Three years ago I had the privilege to take a three months sabbatical. And when I say privilege I meant, but that veils that it was a necessity. I was spent. Emotionally. Mentally. Vocationally. So spent that I needed work with my therapist to even make it the few more weeks until sabbatical. I needed the respite for my and my family’s sake. And for that matter, I needed it for my job’s- the congregation I was pastoring-sake.
And so three years ago we had the privilege to travel to Italy in search of respite. For me that meant taking in as much beauty—art, food, wine (well actually, for me it was Negronis), architecture, and scenery— with my family as possible.
Beauty and creativity have been such essentials to any progress I have made in healing over recent years. I have leaned in activities (like writing) that feel like my own creative spaces, and I have held the hands of other expert guides to lead me into creative spaces that I can’t get to on my own. One such expert guide, Billy Collins, came with me to Italy. I read his poetry (Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems and The Rain in Portugal) daily on sabbatical. As sabbatical. I love and envy his wit and creativity. His poetry makes me laugh and invites me to see the world through new, or maybe it’s renewed, eyes.
The following is something I wrote on sabbatical while in Rome. More specifically, I wrote while in line in the Italian July heat waiting to enter the Colosseum. I offer it for what it is; a snippet of the process by which I’ve gotten here, two years (at the time, now five) down a path from trauma. A path of shame, sorrow, pain, and grief. A path of healing, beauty, love, gelato, Negronis, and hope. A path of creativity and possibility.
My Stone Seat
07/20/19
A Roman mason likely by conquest
poured pride and sweat and hope
Into a stone to
adorn the Emperor’s arena
Now fallen from some unknown height
to the overrun dust path of tourists
Broken now
into non-right angles
Polished smooth by the asses
of countless thousands of pilgrims
Many of which
are now too dust