Let’s be honest; sometimes we writers can be an insufferable bunch. We’re always talking about what’s gone well and what’s gone horribly wrong. We’re always currying someone’s favor. We can be boorish, loutish, whiny, and self-pitying. And all the while, our intention is to get someone to notice us and our work. We want your validation. We want you to like us even if we are intolerable and vain.

We are, as my friend, the poet, Roy Bentley, once said to me, “Flies on the same turd.” Never one to gild the lily, or anything else for that matter, Roy tells it like it is even if we’d rather not hear it. He’s direct. He’s unafraid. No matter that the world can disappoint him, he’s unapologetic about his love for small moments of beauty and grace. He’s in love with the world, even though sometimes he pretends he’s not.

Check out this poem, “Taos, Lightning,” from his collection, Hillbilly Guilt:

That afternoon we moved through Taos Pueblo,

the oldest continuously inhabited human dwelling

in North America, learning what it is to live together,

a good thing to try and make sense of on a honeymoon.

We crossed light-burnished Red Willow Creek. Skies

had blackened to the south in the direction of Santa Fe.

We ventured into dim shops to handle silver artifacts,

eat frybread, and came out to the first huge droplets

of a thunderstorm. Arrows of lightning rained down

from the clouds above arroyos, star-bright branchings

of no discernible intelligent design loosed and blazing

and vanished in an instant. The strikes were in the hills

above the Taos street where Kit Carson had lived once.

We ducked for cover inside a rental car. You shivered

as I started the engine and rolled down a window. Lit

a cigar I’d bought in Santa Fe, the leaf-scent a thing

a passing Tiwa man said was pleasant and welcome.

All this was years ago, and my memory plays tricks.

Maybe the Tiwa man said nothing but only looked

in our direction—these beings who move as one—

and I learned what humans have always known or

might learn on any given afternoon in New Mexico:

that we are all just trying to come in out of the rain,

visiting for such a brief time under the turning sky.

This is a poem that tenderly leads us to what the speaker knows, the truth of all our striving. Despite our misdeeds, missteps, and dunderhead decisions, we share the human desire to come in out of the rain.

I share this poem on the eve of a major surgery for Roy, my friend, a marvelous teller of stories, a master craftsman of poems, and a fierce supporter for so many, like me, in our times of need.

I hope you’ll help me send good juju to Roy and his loved ones during this challenging time. We’ll keep the door open, a lamp lit, a fire burning, to light his way to the warmth inside, so we can visit a while longer “under the turning sky.”

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