Poetry returned
in menopause
reunited white space
expanse of words
awaiting kinder reception
of a brain besotted…
I’d built success on consuming words,
armored up: Know! Connect! Remember!
Under all that armor lived my shame,
the girl who read too slowly or not at all,
who stored up reading to hibernate awake.
By the third poem, hearing my own voice
was like wading into Lake Michigan,
the current gentle, moving past and
pulling me back again, water-dwelling…
How had I returned to this willingly?
It took such self compassion, so of course
it took forever. Why had I believed poetry
was tied in with perfection?
I weep today, such time abandoned
but: I own the voice, know it as my own
writing I have to pour these pages out
word by word to speak with myself
unfold meaning absorb accumulations
of love and life of who I am that much
I’ve learned from poems.
Written beside “Locust” by Julia Alvarez
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