Taking Leave, poems by Mary Ellen Talley

I was playing around with the idea of titling a post, “What Will You Inaugurate this Year?” The idea came via my brilliant friend and piano teacher, Susan, who recently told me, Your year—your next 4 years—do not belong to any politician, they belong to you. Following this advice, however, is one of those “easier said than done” things (as a lot seems, lately).

And, as for the lofty title. I find I haven’t the heart to give anyone inspiring advice, not today. To keep it simple, a better title—maybe for my intentions this whole year—is simply, “What Bethany Is Reading Now.”

Of course I have been reading (reading has been my life-line!), but I’ve been too distracted to share on the blog. The main distraction: my 84-year-old husband fell off a ladder and down our front steps. (Throughout a hospital stay, follow up appointments, etc., he has insisted he is fine. No, he has not gotten rid of the ladders.)

Meanwhile…I had earlier committed to several local poets to review their books. Leaving aside large concepts (suggested by Latinate words such as inaugurate), spending some time on poetry sounds good. Spending a little time on the blog sounds good. So.

First up is a friend’s book, Taking Leave, by Seattle poet Mary Ellen Talley (Kelsay Books, 2024). Taking Leave is dedicated to Talley’s sister, Katherine, and to her niece, Erin, and can best be described as a series of elegies for them, but in the best tradition of the elegiac tradition, the poems do much more, bringing to life the poet’s busy mother and troubled father, family events, conversations, voices, personalities, weaving “serendipity” and “levity” through the sad times. The poet’s sister is the main character, and of course a sister twelve-years-older is—no surprise—sister, role model, cautionary tale, and other-mother.  The complexity of their relationship crescendos. “Your plumage and that glamorous smile on your face” (“Villanelle to De-Escalate”), and:

                    The last breath
doesn’t seem concrete,
but is, the leaden weight of hearts
hanging by a slender thread.

(from “Lunar Maria”)

The book is a how-to on marrying forms (palindrome, villanelle, golden shovel), playing with white space, dancing between poetry and diary-like entries. To quote Susan Rich from the back cover, Taking Leave is about “sisterhood, birds, and the cosmos.”

In this poem, about the poet’s niece, I notice how the dog and the moth anchor the opening and closing, animal-spirit guardians of a sacred space.

Messenger Under Arizona Moon

The black ‘n white mongrel, Winston,
didn’t bark or budge from his place
on the comforter as I lay next to you

watching your and my painted toes point
at the ceiling sky on a day that turned
out to be just two days before you entered

hospice. We talked of when I babysat younger you,
no mention of cancer cells or prayer. I flew home
before the gauzy moon’s final morning

crescent exit. I heard that black moth
circled your space that day,
and touched each corner of the goodbye room

while your mother moistened your lips.
Your world slowed to a stop
as the sprite flew out your barely open window.

—Mary Ellen Talley

You can learn more about the poet at her website: https://maryellentalley.com/.

Read and write more poetry. Pay attention to what matters most to you. That’s what Mary Ellen’s poems inspire me to do.