One of the powers of poetry...

This past weekend I had to think on a brief note to accompany my story "The Bottom Garden" (appearing in Postscripts #26/27 this summer, the issue titled Unfit for Eden after the lead story by Michael Bishop). And I thought of this poem by Adrienne Rich which is a poem that resonated so deeply and personally for me, from the first time I read it in college, that I was weeping by the last two lines of the first stanza. This, I said, pointing to the poem, explains me. That is one of the powers of poetry.

It had been years since I read the poem, so I dug it out (after failing to find it in its entirety anywhere on the internets). Though I'm not that abandoned child anymore, and there are other poems I might go to now that resonate just as strongly for me, I was again crying as I read. Now, though, I can respond to the poem's last two lines:  friends, love, telling story, breathing deep every moment that you're graced with life. 

Since it's also National Poetry Month, I thought I'd share the poem:

 

In the Wake of Home

 

1.

You sleep in a room with bluegreen curtains

Posters   a pile of animals on the bed

A woman and a man who love you

And each other   slip the door ajar

You are almost asleep   they crouch in turn

To stroke your hair   you never wake

This happens every night for years.

This never happened.

 

 

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