Columbia poet's latest book faces losing an adult child to overdose with beauty, grief

Although slight-seeming, "The Weight of One Hummingbird Feather" is enough to break a beloved back.

So we learn early in the new book from Columbia poet Sharon SingingMoon, available on Spartan Press. "One Feather," which lends the collection its name, measures out "just 2 milligrams" — enough drugs to catalyze an overdose, to steal a son, to loose a torrent of emotions.

Often beautiful, always brutally honest, the book reflects on the poet's own loss of her son last January. SingingMoon ushers readers through "classical" stages of grief and those we fear to name: rightful — and righteous — anger, wishful thinking, shooting-star memories of blessed harmony and safety.

What's more, the book unveils the sort of grieving that happens while a loved one is still alive, the writing reappearing on the wall no matter how hard you scrub.

The book opens with "Overdose January 2, 2023" and, in these lines, SingingMoon gestures toward recurring motives. A passage here joins others to form a new, heartrending canon of road poems; the adult child checks in from could-be-anywhere, delivering spoken-word news clippings that range from not-so-good to staggering:

a year or two or more — no contact / then desperate calls / "send a ticket — bus or plane / it's raining, cold / in California / miss seeing you at Christmas / I'm tired / in jail in Indiana / in Tennessee / in Missouri / bail me out / I got beat up / my car was stolen / I'm OK / send money / can't wait to get back on the road"

Poems like "The Leavings" convey a persistent tenderness, perhaps the only force as or more relentless than addiction.

"a child — a puzzle — a person," SingingMoon writes in an act of loving taxonomy. "we carry, birth, belong to each other / until we don't / we gather broken pieces / fit them together / what is missing / may be what is needed most."

"A Slow Burn" chronicles the gradual, and still abrupt, change in a son's life.

At 15 and "drinking too much," it "feels like the world is spinning / & you are free."

"by forty-six / it takes so much more," she counters. "being the loudest / telling tales on the corner / for a hit, a snort, a shot ..."

In a profound gesture of empathy, "Closing Time" imagines addiction from within the addict, from beneath the very surface layers of their skin. "not all demons dance / but they do call the tune," SingingMoon writes.

Elsewhere, the poet offers harrowing descriptions of the detritus of addiction ("White Bread"); re-stages holiday scenes too theatrical not to be true ("Christmas Chaos"); questions a parent's culpability ("was it my job to know everything you hid from me?" she writes in "My Job").

Perhaps most devastating here is neither the bitter nor the sweet, but how they live in uneasy proximity, mere pages apart. "Storms on the Horizon" is both an image and a reality, as the poet sits up with her son to recall something elemental, something glorious:

When I visited in Northern California

he spoke of how the storms

are not as beautiful as the storms we watched

from our porch in Missouri

"When news of your overdose death went 'round" forms a litany of the too late, of well-wishers and good intentions, while "But Not Today" deals in echoes and the silences you create to still them.

Some days may need a push

just a little

to stop counting

wrongs, pains, tears

do one thing

coffee, walk in the garden

breathe, touch something alive

smile intentionally

until smiling just happens

Ultimately, "The Weight of One Hummingbird Feather" arrives like a cup of cold water, two ways: refreshment and understanding to the weary loved one; a splash in the face for readers who need waking up. This is a necessary book that never needed to be written.

SingingMoon will officially launch the book at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 16 at Skylark Bookshop. For event details, visit https://www.skylarkbookshop.com/new-events.

Aarik Danielsen is the features and culture editor for the Tribune. Contact him at adanielsen@columbiatribune.com or by calling 573-815-1731. He's on Twitter/X @aarikdanielsen.

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Columbia poet responds to son's overdose with beauty, grief in book