Advice to Advisers
A poem by Llewellyn McKernan

Advice to Advisers

Play a tuned piano
with snap and sweat.
Play it, even if one
note’s flat.
And that rolling stone? Make it stop
and chat.

Buy Sunshine Hill,
especially if you feel
that the shadow it makes heals all ills,
and eat that apple,
especially
the peel.

Be a hocus-pocus
glad giddy yawn.
Be a higgledy-piggledy howl of a yarn.
Be a hoochie-coochie
botched happy
outcome.

Meet the story
of your life.
Test its will
by shedding just one emerald tear
until it melts
fully to fill
your deepest
driest darkest well.

About the Author:

Llewellyn McKernan is a poet and children’s book writer.  She has had six poetry books published for adults and four for children. She has a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing (Brown University).  Her motto for writing is by the French novelist Colette: “Look long and hard at what gives you the most pleasure, but look even longer and harder at what gives you the most pain.”  

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