The Poetry of Ferrell Mercer

book review by Lynn R. Miller

A couple of days ago I received a book of poems from a lifelong friend of this publication, Ferrell Mercer. I cracked it open and read one poem from page 52 entitled For My Grandchildren:

You cannot spend
your way to wealth.
Spending money may make you feel wealthy,
saving money makes you wealthy

Assume politicians
and anyone else trying to sell you something
or anyone whose title has “manager” in it
are not telling you everything you need to know.

No treatment
is as good as prevention —.
exercise your body, mind and spirit,
maintain your tools and equipment.

Know the difference
between toys and tools —
both are fine unless you confuse them.

Know the direction the weather comes from
and where your water and food
come from and where they go
to the greatest extent you can.

Loving others is worth it.
They will hurt and disappoint you
as you will hurt and disappoint them
but the joy is worth the pain.

Get really good at something.
It doesn’t matter what you choose,
becoming really good at something
teaches you about yourself.

Keep your promises,
even when it is hard to do.
Be someone others can count on.

Share.
You were born extremely fortunate,
don’t take that for granted.

Be compassionate
to others and to yourself.

To quote D.T. Suzuki
“Change Happens.”

Call your mother.

---

I sat still for a moment. The inclination to put the book down and get back to urgencies was knocking on my skull. While brain and mind argued for me to get back to work, my fingers flipped through Ferrell’s book to page 70 and a second poem entitled dream:

He began by sitting still

at first he only sat
feeling foolish and not a little afraid

but as he sat
he changed
he became a bear
lumbering down the hillside
he became a deer
tiptoeing through the pines
he became an eagle
drifting high above the plain

he becane a rattlesnake
sunning on a rock
a lizard
on a yucca stem
a grasshopper
on a blade of grass
an ant
carrying a bit of leaf
then a cactus
a mesquite
a blade of grass

then a drop of water in the great river
a cloud high in the heavens
a bolt of lightning

finally he became a small piece
of granite rock
a boulder the size of a bison

and his heart became a stone heart
his dreams, granite dreams

either he awoke from this dream
and got up from that hill
or he still sits there today
a granite boulder in the sun.

I don’t remember which.

---

And then I read another, and another, and another. Each and every one had something tangible to say, something to share, gratitudes, something to warn against, apologies, celebrations; something to ask of me.

I had written a book of essays ten years ago and recently put quite a bit of time into getting it ready to publish. But it nagged at me, I feared I had cut away too much and left the wrong stuff in. I sent it out to friends to preview because, at this advancing age, I do not trust my instincts as I once did. My friends also cautioned me. But in spite of that, I had saved this page in this publication to present that book of mine to our little world.

Then came Ferrell’s fulsome book which did not ask to be published, which made no demands and yet those maligned instincts of mine said people need to know about his book, Leavings. It is worthy. It illumines. Even in its occasional discomforture, it is welcome, worthy and needed.

So I yanked my book off the presentation cliff. If my oafish loaf of a book ever deserves the light of day it will be because, the best graces of my friends in hand, I went back in and pruned its unnecesary and disfiguring branches, and put back in the raw personal accessible stuff I had cut out. It will be because Ferrell Mercer lent a hand and held a light. Thank you my friend. I am imagining your face as you discover this page.

— Lynn R. Miller

ISBN: 979-8292229162
Ferrell Mercer
5 Longford Dr.
Ruckersville, VA 22968