Monday, May 4, 2009

Strangely, I Keep Writing Poems

Which, again, is something I never do, always write prose, never think in terms of line breaks and form in that way, but something in my brain is causing line breaks, and so, well, it just happens. On Saturday I was a sobby hormonal pregnant weepy mess, all moody and sappy and sad like the weather, and I had Jason drop me off instead on continuing errands because I wanted to lie in bed and emote. On the way up the stairs I checked the mail and lo, discovered an exciting delivery: Dear Apocalypse, a new book of poetry by one KA Hays (aka Katie), a wondrous writer and generous soul, my dear pal from grad school (and kind appreciator of this here blog). I promptly got in bed with the book and read it almost all the way through, much of it out loud so Ivy could enjoy it as well. It's a wonderful book, dark and lyrical and precise, a book that, to quote one of the back cover blurbs, "finds a spiritual power in the violence of nature". Reading it in my particular state felt very appropriate, reeling as I was from a certain magical violence of nature, assaulting me in the forms of hormonal tidal waves, and I came across one poem that referenced a mother bird and her lost fledglings and oh, it got me. And I thought, I am so affected by these lines that I have no choice but to respond.

(It should definitely be mentioned that this poem is in no remote way as lovely and well-crafted as any of Katie's. Just sayin'.)

DARKLING, DARLING

after 'Darkling' by KA Hays

Poring now through the new book
looking for the one poem I read
about some parent, animal, a bird,
something winged with a baby, or babies,
and a sense of loss and or desire, lines
that made me pause and sigh, cry
more than I already was, in bed on a sad
Saturday in May with rain and so much grey—

We do not have weather here,
are not supposed to, are supposed to move
through the air without feeling it, I am happy,
temperate, undramatic, but that day was a welling
up of it all, new blood, small kicks, hormones,
roiling breathless frustrations and hopes
and beauty, tremendous, trembling, and then, reading,
sorrow for the mother thrush who wings off
and her countless fledgings, lost (lost!)
their departures,
common as dusk

(because it happens everyday, all of this,
this birth and death and living)

I love dusk, the sound of the word, the look
of the light, the memory of day, acceptance of the night
and I
I never want you to depart,
never want to lose you in the dim evening, or
on a warm morning, a spacious afternoon with
lavendera shaking in the breeze out the window,
never on a crying night, a rocking hour, not ever
during a reaching fumbling
waking moment.

Because now we are we—grey day or not,
crying or not, beyond sense, sensation,
imagination—we, alive on a wire, in the bed, inside,
held and adored by a new midnight choir,
and oh, we cannot be excused from this
and do not, do not want to be.

1 comment:

Katie said...

Oh, Kate Schatz! The poem made me all choked in the throat (and I don't have the explanation of pregnancy...)--you're all humble and funny and self-deprecating as usual, but the poem is gorgeous and sad and strong.

Love that pregnancy makes you think in line breaks and enjambments. It's like the vegetarians who crave meat during pregnancy, but much nicer. Prose writer craves & writes poems. Maybe it'll be a permanent effect with you... writing both. "Darkling, Darling" kind of makes me think it could be.