Advice to Beginners

Ellen Cort

Begin.  Keep on beginning.  Nibble on everything.

Take a hike.  Teach yourself to whistle.  Lie.

The older you get the more they’ll want your stories.

Make them up.  Talk to stones.  Short out electric fences.

Swim with the sea turtle into the moon.  Learn how to die.

Eat moonshine pie.  Drink wild geranium tea.  Run naked in the rain.    

Everything that happens will happen and none of us will be safe from it.   

Pull up anchors.  Sit close to the god of night.

Lie still in a stream and breathe water.

Climb to the top of the highest tree until you come to the branch

where the blue heron sleeps.              

Eat poems for breakfast.  Wear them on your forehead.              

Lick the mountain’s bare shoulder.

Measure the color of days around your mother’s death.

Put your hands over your face and listen to what they tell you.