out of time

I don't really have a post today, and it's not about poetry.  I've been reading, you see, and watching, and there's only so much time in a person's last month of the school year.

A while back I read  A Wrinkle in Time to Duncan (which turns out not to be such a great read-aloud, but we made it work; any thoughts on that assertion?); then we did Percy Jackson 4 (my favorite so far) and most recently we read, quite slowly, When You Reach Me. 

Simultaneously, and after working to get into it for some weeks, I was reading The Time Traveller's Wife, which has been Daisy's favorite book since the middle of 7th grade.  (We'll go back some time to how I felt when I realized that my barely 13 yo was reading and rereading this adult work of fiction; it felt the same as when I realized she had watched six seasons of "How I Met Your Mother" before I even knew that show existed. Oy.)  Alongside THAT, I've been watching "HIMYM" with Daisy, which is essentially a time-travel experience, and the modern "Doctor Who" with Duncan.

So I have no poetry post today, only a report about how I can't stop thinking about diamond chips on a gold ring and the broccoli patch, Aunt Beast and the Laughing Man and Henry, and whether Rebecca Stead and Audrey Niffenegger have ever exchanged emails, and what it is exactly that Daisy is learning about the art of narrative from Ted (and I hope NOTHING from Barney), and how this whole two-Marcuses or two-Henrys-in-the-same-place-in-time is a slippery concept for me in the same way that subtraction is really slippery for some kindergarteners (including the 5-year-old me).

In the meantime I do have an OIK poem brewing, about the kangaroo's porch...but Calef Brown has probably already written it.

Enjoy Poetry Friday with Jama today!

blind, feeling a way

It's three months until we move, but in the spirit of making hay while the sun shines, I've begun casually, nostalgically sorting and packing a few things.  In a pile of books in the parlor I came across a collection of Anne Sexton's poems.  Opening randomly, I read--and burst into tears.

Daisy doesn't care for horses, but she is 13, and I see this moment coming.



Pain for a Daughter // Anne Sexton


Blind with love, my daughter
has cried nightly for horses,
those long necked marchers and churners
that she has mastered, any and all,
reining them in like a circus hand -
the excitable muscles and the ripe neck -
tending, this summer, a pony and a foal.

She who is squeamish to pull
a thorn from the dog’s paw
watched the pony blossom with distemper,
the underside of the jaw swelling
like an enormous grape,
Gritting her teeth with love,
she drained the boil and scoured it
with hydrogen peroxide until pus
ran like milk on the barn floor.

Blind with loss all winter,
in dungarees, a ski jacket, and a hard hat,
she visits the neighbors’ stables,
our acreage not zoned for barns,
they who own the flaming horses
and the swan-necked thoroughbred
that she tugs at and cajoles,
thinking it will burn like a furnace
under her small-hipped English seat.

Blind with pain, she limps home;
The thoroughbred has stood on her foot.
He rested there like a building;
He grew into her foot until they were one.
The marks of the horseshoe printed
into her flesh, the tips of her toes
ripped off like pieces of leather,
three toenails swirled like shells
and left to float in blood in her riding boot.

Blind with fear, she sits on the toilet,
her foot balanced over the washbasin,
her father, hydrogen peroxide in hand,
performing the rites of the cleansing.
She bites on a towel, sucked in breath,
sucked in and arched against the pain,
her eyes glancing off me where
I stand at the door, eyes locked
on the ceiling, eyes of a stranger,
And then she cries…
Oh! My god, Help me!

Where a child would have cried “Mama!”
Where a child would have believed “Mama!”
She bit the towel and called on God,
And I saw her life, stretch out…
I saw her torn in childbirth,
And I saw her, at that moment,
in her own death,
And I knew that she knew.

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Poetry Friday is hosted today by Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference, where she's sharing some of the poems exchanged through the Summer Poem Swap she has organized.  I'm participating and will have at least three to share next Friday--thanks, Tabatha!