35/52 “Glimmers”

Pelicans dive bombing the ocean for food. Friends, so many friends. Intimate candlelit dinners, raucous ab workout level laughter. Voice memos as personal podcasts from those faraway. The step stool my husband made for me as his first wood working project, being that loved. Witnessing the women in my life get bigger, not smaller and I don’t mean their bodies, their bodies are the least interesting thing about them. Water colored sunsets and damp ocean air. Rainbows and magical strangers. Poems being sent in a group text. A photo shoot that made me feel like someone is reading my diary.

34/52 “Picking Up Where I Left Off”

A few months ago, I did something crazy. I started a podcast called "The Poetry Hotline" Before all the bad times, this wouldn’t have been that weird, but like struggles do, hope and lust for life can disappear. I had stopped taking any chances. I love poetry, I love all the poems my writer friends are vulnerable and brave enough to share, so I decided on a whim to do it. It has been one of the best parts of this year. As a friend once said to me, you aren’t starting over, you’re picking up where you left off.

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The Poetry Hotline

A biweekly poetry newsletter, pep talk and podcast. Poetry as a life preserver.

By Nicole Peattie

33/52 “Medicinal”

I have spent the majority of the last two months in the physical presence of fellow writers. Poets, more specifically. I met one of my heroes, in addition to making the acquaintance of strangers that have become friends. I have met people I have been writing with in community for the past four years in real life. I have smelled their perfume, seen their smiles, held their hands and their tears. I have heard them, voices trembling, sharing their words, like we were all reading out loud from our diaries. I am full. It was just what the doctor ordered.

32/52 The Lions Gate

I spent the weekend at a writers retreat, with a group of poets I’ve been writing with for four years. My hair smells like campfire, my voice is gone, and my abs hurt from laughing so hard I did cry. We gathered on the foggy Washington coast, held each other’s grief in our cupped hands, wrote the shape of it. For one it was a snake, for another an axe, and yet another, a lighthouse. I’m careless sometimes, and I’m a pretty sore loser, but I do know one thing. Love? It’s the whole goddamn point. Don’t skimp on it.

31/52 “Val’s Rainbow”

Irish coastal countryside, cool and misty with wind blown sea grass of watercolor yellow and green, scattered wild flowers. Eight poets trudging uphill in the early morning quiet. Up ahead, a rock quarry with a man drilling as we sneak alongside the lip of the canyon. Up and over some barbed wire, we descend at the edge of the Cliffs of Moher. I toss Mom’s ashes into the air, blessing her name with poetry. We turn, and there, over the ocean, a rainbow appears. Gasps, tears, we hold hands and snap photos as we breathe out, Val, into the ether.

30/52 “Belief System”

I believe in the longing of a mourning dove’s song. I believe in my husband’s map brain. I don’t believe in the blue screen of my cell phone. I believe in the sacred space between each heart beat. I believe there is a poem in everything. I believe the darkness has the most to teach us about the light. I believe I crashed the party, but I brought gifts. I believe my mother lives in my left hip and my father lives in my right. I believe in the swarm of bees in my sternum telling me, we never leave.

29/52 “Brompton’s Cocktail”

I have been researching and writing about pain. About the ways humans, and modern medicine, try to relieve it. An early elixir was created at Brompton Royal Hospital. It contained morphine, cocaine, alcohol and chloroform. It was given until the 1970’s to relieve pain and promote sociability near death. It was phased out because morphine was found to be the most effective part of the mixture in studies. I keep thinking that the original mixture kept one of the best parts of pain relief at the forefront, more quality time with the people we love. Love is pain relief, too.

28/52 “A Study of Sunsets”

I am fortunate to have frequent access to the California coastline; the Pacific Ocean. I do not take this for granted. It is one of the many undeserved blessings in my life, and every time I go there, I make copious amounts of photos. I use my iPhone, film cameras I am besotted with at the time, even digital. A lot of my life has passed from this vantage point, these scenes have been a sort of CPR for me. I am going through my archive to print some of my work. I thought I’d share some medicine with you.

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27/52 “Baby, You’re a Firework”

Fireworks were invented in ancient China. My first memory of them was from the Bicentennial Fourth of July in 1976. I was only four years old, but I remember the excitement of the BBQ our family friends hosted; the Piccolo Pete’s and the multi-colored ground bloom flowers that would spin and smoke on the sidewalk, our dads making us a magical homemade display of the latest light up explosives while drinking cold beers and grilling hot dogs. Last night, we watched all the sparks being set off on the beach, holding out for the light bursting in the dark skies.

26/52 “Glimmers from the Last Few Week-ish”

A “What’s App” chat group with my best writer friends. A photo shoot that got all the creative juices flowing. Briny, ocean air and cypress trees. Visiting a friend in San Francisco for a much needed catch-up. A hard, but necessary conversation with another. The brand new public library across the street from my house. They let us do an entire photo shoot in their gorgeous magic hour light and seemed tickled while stacking books. A vintage pink rotary telephone for doing CPR on my soul. A Jane Hirshfield quote shared by ; “Open and ready for impact.” Me, too.

25/52 “Notes on My Father on Fathers Day”

His name was Ronald, but everyone called him Ron or Red. He was big, burly and bald with bright blue eyes surrounded by laugh lines. I inherited his hearty laugh, big butt and bad back. He loved cold Coors Light, ossobuco and spumoni. He taught me how to add and subtract playing Black Jack. He worked thirty-five years at the gas and electric department, then at the local golf course booking green times until the day he died. He was a quiet, steady presence and a great Dad. Every time I hear “The Gambler,” I know he’s somewhere, splitting aces.

24/52 “Nurses Notes”

Today, I went to a diner that ushered me through nursing school thirty years ago. Back then, it was a twenty-four hour joint. I would go after class or study sessions; flash cards and quizzes and reading out loud about the wonder of the heart and its electrical system. I would be ravenous, on my way home to an empty apartment, so I’d detour to the diner. The same waitress from all those years ago with the same red script neck tattoo served me coffee. I still can’t read what it says. I always tell myself it says, “Keep Going.”

I would say 99% of what I write starts in my Notes App on my iPhone. Mostly because my ideas come to me while I don’t have pen and paper; on a walk, in the shower, at the movies, waiting in line at the cafeteria for my lunch at work. These are unrelated separate entries.

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23/52 “100 Words From My Notes App”

Are we trying to hack love? Don’t cause a scene, my mother’s mantra in my ear. You never know, good luck or bad. My body is full of wishbones*. Everyone thinks that they could have done something different to have prevented the bad things that have happened. Is it too late for pansies? Sacred wound, holy rage. I’ve been operating on dry shampoo and cheap lip gloss. Is this a graveyard spiral; an inevitable plane crash? All wet winged and starving for home. Did you hear? This is shorthand for-someone has died. First, you must want to live this life.

*Line from a poem by Nicole Dalcourt’s in her poetry collection, "What Remains"

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22/52 “Showing Up”

There is a family friend I know that attends so many wakes that she was known as a funeral crasher; the opposite of a wedding crasher. People would always wonder in whispers what her connection was to the deceased, however tenuous it seemed. Now I understand her. When you have been touched by grief deeper than any ocean, all you want is for people to bear witness. Yes, the world still spins, but your world has stopped on its axis because a person you loved so much is gone. And maybe you show up so you can witness the love.

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21/52 “Heidi’s Pies”

They opened in 1970, serving fresh slices of pie a la mode, typical diner fare as well as whole pies for takeaway. Mike and I visited on a whim recently. Not much has changed. Chipped formica tables, corners of chairs lovingly taped together, waitresses that have seen it all. Strong, bitter coffee with an old sound system playing classics like “WIsh You Were Here” by Pink Floyd. I swear I saw myself as a teenager, sitting in my pink prom dress, laughing with friends as we cobbled together enough change for a slice and some coffee, drunk on our youth.

20/52-”L’appel du vide*”

Twenty years before I’d ever seen it in person, I had a recurring dream of jumping off the edge of the Grand Canyon. Being under five feet tall, I’ve always had a complicated relationship with heights, considering I’d never reach one that was tall enough to see over most countertops. Great heights give me vertigo and a seasick feeling, although my first thought when atop them is, “what would happen if I just jumped?” Like there is a magnet drawing me to the abyss. Now I know that I want to know how it feels to fly, weightless. Free.

*French term translating to “the call of the void”

19/52 “Going Home”

There are galaxies between heartbeats, oceans we swim between shores to find our place in this world. Octopuses have three hearts, and when they are in captivity, they sometimes escape back to the sea they came from. I cannot help but think of the endless love a creature could store up in multiple beating hearts, risking life and limb for a familiar taste of the ocean floor. I try to write the corners of my memory, to find proof that my mother prayed for me before I was born. How every living being is just trying to find their place.

18/52 “Grief Olympics”

Every loss counts, the pain you feel is real and warranted. Someone doesn’t have to die. You can grieve the loss of dreams, health, a religion. The death of a person doesn’t need to be catastrophic, it can be quiet and expected, in the natural order. Sure, there are losses that disrupt that order, like the loss of a child. Because one person loses a child doesn’t mean the death of your 100 year old grandpa doesn’t count. This isn’t a competition, it is life. Nothing lasts. Everything dies. You are allowed to let your big heart feel every departure.

17/52 “Agita”

I come from the “Land of the Anxious People.” This means I worry about the weather, parking at any destination, traffic, if I’m self-centered, car accidents, everyone else’s feelings but my own, heights, the common cold, bloodworms, cancer, boating accidents (I don’t have a boat and no one I know directly does either), what shoes to wear anywhere, birds, if I’m kind enough, clowns, if I listen enough, if I’m too careless or I care too much, if my writing makes any sense, the feelings of inanimate objects which allegedly don’t have feelings, that the end will come too soon.

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Yesterday was my late father’s 90th birthday. This is for him.

16/52 “To My Dad on His 90th Birthday”

I remember your crinkly smile and twinkly blue eyes. I remember “818 to 512,” your CB radio handle to dispatch. I remember your laugh, your Old Spice. I remember your strong arms. I remember using your bald head as a crystal ball, you’d cackle when I’d say, “I wish” while rubbing your dome. I remember how smooth you were on your feet when we danced at weddings. I remember how every time you answered the phone, you’d ask me how my car was holding up before you’d hand the phone to Mom. What you really meant was “I love you.”