I remember sky
It was blue as ink
Or at least I think
I remember sky
I remember snow
Soft as feathers
Sharp as thumb tacks
Coming down like lint

Laura Benanti singing “I Remember” from Stephen Sondheim’s Evening Primrose

Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. These are Mary Oliver’s instructions for living a life. We can understand that those were her instructions for writing poetry as well. Sondheim’s lyrics remind me of life’s poetry. Attention, astonishment, and telling the world are at the heart of it all. A winter sky becomes something more. Memories live. Stories breathe. Grief eases. Grace embraces. The falling apart and falling together find their rhythm. He found perfect words, showing us that perfect words are possible.

I remember the first time I heard a Stephen Sondheim musical. Recalling it feels like a dream in which the memory may say more about how I want to remember it than how it happened. Memories can work like that. My high school drama teacher, or maybe my music teacher, showed us a VHS tape of the Tony Award-winning Broadway production of Into the Woods. My heart split in two. I immediately bought a copy of the show and watched it again and again. I showed it to my students during my brief experience as a high school drama teacher. Into the Woods, is a through line in my theatre experience – from theatre student to theatre teacher. It is one of the reasons I know life is poetry. The stories we hear, the songs we sing, the lessons we learn, and the lyrics we memorize all matter. We make sense of our seasons, our giants, our loves, our losses, and our triumphs. We remember what we pay attention to, what astonishes us, and what we tell about.