Tag Archives: Jessan Dunn Otis

At This Time of the Turning of the Year – essay

At This Time of the Turning of the Year – essay

At this time of the turning of the year my thoughts go in two directions – turning back and turning forward. Simultaneously, I stand exactly where and as I am in this moment.

Turning back, 2014 has been another year of continuing to become accustomed to not being able to hear my youngest sister’s laughter, to share a story of our adventures and expectations. Until we meet, again, Genevieve – I love you and miss you, BabyGirl. Your children and I will tell stories to your grandchildren of growing up together and of your gentleness and loving ways – part of your legacy.

2014 has, also, been a year of good, sometimes challenging, professional and personal work for me. Collaborating with clients to create custom-crafted content, strategies, buffing and polishing existing content until it shines and communicates exactly, mentoring and more. Good folks. Good work. Thank you for your confidence and continued support. My special thanks to Adam J. Kovitz, an extra-ordinary Friend and collaborator. Get this guy!

My personal work continues to shift, evolve, change, as it has since 1985. My gratitude to all poets and writers who came before me is steadfast and enduring. A particular nod of the head must go to Michael S. Harper, 1st Poet Laureate for the State of Rhode Island, through whose work, counsel, teachings and friendship I have been (and continue to be) enlarged, challenged, humbled, sustained. Thank you, MSH.

Gratitude, also, for the blessings of love from my three SweetMen – Al, Sandro and Ces. You enrich and sweeten my life; and, are loved more than you know.

In contrast, there were parts of 2014 that I would wish I never witnessed nor experienced. Continued killings, hatreds, viciousness, turmoil, senseless slaughters, ongoing acts of unkindness. Heartbreaking. Destructive beyond all measure. Repeating history. Lessons not learned.

Once again I ask myself: “What is my part in this?” I ask you: “What is your part in this?”

And, so its continues to go – another month turned, another year passes.

At this time of the turning of the year, I remember, rejoice, reflect and rejuvenate. May the blessings and joy of loving and being loved by someone somewhere follow and sustain you throughout 2015. May all your troubles be little ones; and, the wind always at your back.

#Happy2015

~ Jessan

IF WE… For ARO – poem

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IF WE…

Big Red Heart

– For ARO

If we were not able to touch, as we do If it

was not possible to share in the ways that

only you and I have made with each other

would we still love in the ways we do now?

If we had no apparent means of enjoying all our senses have encouraged us to explore

would we, still, love each other, as we do?

If we, unexpectedly, found ourselves, inexplicably, dumb-made, incapable to

communicate

the shades and variations and variables of how we love each other would we continue,

as we have, to grow in it?

My reply is, simply, this Your laughter is my rain, it nourishes me Your tears, my tears

Your joy, my joy beyond my breath.

(c) 12/3/04 Jessan Dunn Otis

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Happy Anniversary SweetMan ~

Love ( all ways),

~ Jessan

Magic Words – essay

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Magic Words

Being raised as I was, there were three phrases or “Magic Words” that were consistently spoken and required – “Please”, “Thank you”, and “Excuse me”.

When I had children of my own, I taught them the same lessons I had been taught when I was growing up – both in our home and outside our home.

Over time, I’ve come to realize that what I came to believe was common courtesy is, often, not so common. Nevertheless, the lessons I was taught about the “Magic Words” have persisted.

To this day, I hear my Mother’s and Father’s voice whenever I speak or write those words; and, I continue to wonder why they’ve, often, become so uncommon in life and in work.

Thanks, Mom and Dad, for teaching me one of many important, simple lessons.

Your Loving and Devoted Daughter,

~ Jessan

Thank You ~ many languages

#ActsOfKindness – essay

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Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. ~ Mark Twain #quote

#ActsOfKindness – essay

More and more, recently, it seems to me that what’s needed are more acts of simple courtesy and kindness. A smile to a stranger. The door held open for the next person behind you. A call and/or handwritten note to a loved one you know is not in such a good place today; or, to whom you’ve not reached out for too long. The simple “Please.” and “Thank you.”

With that in mind, via various social media, I’ve been posting with the hashtag #ActsOfKindness.

If you, like me, agree that our Big Blue Marble could use just a little more courtesy, a little more kindness, please be free to use and/or post using #ActsOfKindness.

Thanks, in advance and anticipation ~

~ Jessan

Before All Our Lives Began To Change – poem

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BEFORE ALL OUR LIVES BEGAN TO CHANGE

Before all our lives began to change

time was stretched between holidays like

carnavale lights and summer lasted forever

every year until Labor Day mysteriously

arrived again to change living to another circle

It seemed we played all the time — hair cuts on

darby horses and watermelon seed fights, building

castles of sand and jelly fish oozing against the

jetties, discovering the nest holes of horseshoe

crabs below the high tide line, and snow forts drifted

three stories every January and February, sledding

hellions down Cooperstown Road, the cold and snowflakes

cutting younger cheeks, with the excruciating pleasure

to do it, again Playing “I have a little umbrella,”

dragging the chair covers across the sand like dragon tails

or lizards or princesses Shrieking to begin hide-and-seek,

crouched under the crocheted orange and blue and brown

comforter — dying to be found and hoping that we would

never be discovered, because that discovery always

ended in a serious session of being tickled until we

could not breathe

But, then, living changed us into other circles,

other places, other people.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Dedicated ~ In Love and Memory to: Barbara Dunn Blossom, Genevieve Dunn, Helen Smith Dunn, Mahlon H. Dunn, Jr., Tacy Dunn SanAntonio

(c) 1997 Jessan Dunn (DeCredico) Otis ~ RHODE ISLAND WOMEN SPEAK: An Anthology of Authors and Artists, The Rhode Island Committee, The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), Ed. Rosemary W. Prisco, p.19.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

White Butterflies

Before All Our Lives Began To Change – narrative

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Before All Our Lives Began to Change – narrative

In every life there are times that drive us back inside ourselves, that cause us to remember people, places, events that may have been met, passed through and/or witnessed many years earlier; and, to reflect upon those remembrances from a different point of view.

In particular, the past year and a half has been another period of that kind of reflection in my life. Often, these times a hard. Frequently triggered by a loss. That is true with me.

I write about this not from the point of pity but, rather, with gratitude. It’s been another kind of refining, tempering and becoming more clear, less “cluttered” and closer (still) to my truer self – a life-long process.

This is just to say that if you, too, have been suffering, felt lost, are confused or are in a moment of pain and seek peace – keep searching, go to those “hard places” that only you truly know about your life, open your Spirit to the simple beauty that is always available.

No one ever told me this living would be easy. I’m not telling you that either.

What I’m saying is face your fears (they are illusions). Embrace (wholeheartedly and openly) your pain. Call it by name, deal with it and, then, move on to the better parts that are waiting for you to arrive.

What I’m continually reminded of when I re-emerge from these times is that the singular gifts of love, light and laughter are always available, it is a choice to receive or reject them.

In gratitude,

~ Jessan

The Cambridge Poem

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T H E C A M B R I D G E P O E M ~ #poetry

Commencement Address – Class of 1990 – The Cambridge School, Weston, MA

Give your regards when you go to the reunion and at the dinner,

say that you were thinking about them They’ll, eventually, recall

your name; you went to the movies with that one, felt the weight

of their life when they sat next to you – they never said a word

All of you are rising friends: one used to play the piano, one once

wrote a play, one even seemed awakened enough to photograph the

fields as the unencumbered with tutored minds and unrehearsed passions

Meet them at the door, they’ve brought the souvenirs of time; a seashell

from the Pacific, the nose of a marble saint, and from the field

a spent casing divulged from the flower bed

Face a rising world bearing its gifts in its hands, kiss your incidental

dreams – rise, move away, take others

Give your regards to the well-protected; you knew them, you went

to school together There’s something to bury when you begin

to move away When you are ready and rich in your wish for the

world, you have a new race to start

From the heart of this darkened quadrangle, I hear the library

hum, an immense chorus of writers murmur inside their books along

the unlit, alphabetical shelves; each one stitched into their

own private coat, (you will have to write your own) together forming

a continuous, enormous breath of language

I picture a figure in the act of reading, shoes on the desk, head tilted

into the wind, a person in two worlds, holding the nape of their neck

as another’s life saturates the page; or, in the middle of a thesis,

moving from paragraph to verse, touring endless rooms (you will have to write your own)

I hear the voice of my mother and father reading and inside their

voices lay other, distant sounds

I see us reading ourselves away from ourselves, straining in circles of

light to find more light until the line of words becomes a trail

that we follow across a page and you will have to listen hard to

hear the voices going away (and, you will have to write your own).

A Story About Fireflies

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A Story About Fireflies

The two men walked farther and farther ahead of us, while you and I trolled up that newly black-topped hill, talking of many things in that hot, Vermont early evening.

From time to time we became aware that if we wandered too far left or right as we slowly zigzagged up that hill, the sky becoming darker, that we would be in jeopardy of stumbling over the high edges of that pitch black macadam into the low growth and bushes left and right.

Just at a certain moment, when the sun had barely disappeared but still cast its last light into the coming night, we stopped. On both sides of that road those dark bushes and low growth exploded with the flickers of thousands of fireflies.

It was like this – rising macadam heat, two voices in the distance, fading light and being surrounded by fireflies, fireflies, fireflies.

The only way to change the world is to change the story.

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The only way to change the world is to change the story.

Eggs

The first time I read this sentence I read it, thought I understood it and read on. That was some time ago.

The next time I read this sentence some time had passed, a few life-changing events had occurred and, while I was the same person, I wasn’t the same person and I began to understand a bit more.

The most recent time I read this sentence I stopped reading and breathed in the spirit of this sentence, as if it was a sweet-scented and familiar perfume or food or light.

The world was still the world, the sentence was still the same sentence; and, yet, everything was changed.

What’s your story?

Poetry as Narrative

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THE RISK OF REAL GROUND

Stepping into air the woman falls

momentarily catching hair and nails

as on a wing or cliff or webs

First this, then that

Falling is water washing flesh away

it changes everything

begin to learn, again

Earth gives up pieces of itself so slowly

breathing passes through ash or oak or bone

amber perfume fills a room

A hand touches and moves away

you meet yourself

passing by a shattered glass

Say you understand, say you say

stand up, open your mouth

what are you standing on.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

– for Todd Bartel, Joanna Barth, Miguel Calderon, Sean Coel, Jemima Farwell, Lael Jacobs,

Elizabeth Jackson Johnston, Blane Kieng, John McLaughlin, Anna Regnery, Charis SanAntonio,

and Jodi Schwartz

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