The BlueIris Semi-Nightly Poetry Break, 2/28/08

[BlueIris]

"Prayer"

Someone or something is leaning close to me now
trying to tell me the one true story of my life: 

one note,
low as a bass drum, beaten over and over:

It's beginning summer,
and the man I love has forgotten my smell

the cries I made when he touched me, and my laughter
when he picked me up

and carried me, still laughing, and laid me down, 
among the scattered daffodils on the dining room table.

And Jane is dead,
			                                              and I want to go where she went,

where my brother went, 
and whoever it is that whispered to me 

when I was a child in my father's bed is come back now:
and I can't stop hearing:
				                                             This is the way it is,
the way it always was and will be—

beaten over and over—panicking on street corners,
or crouched in the back of taxicabs,

afraid I'll cry out in jammed traffic, and no one will know me or
know where to bring me.
                                   
			                                       There is, I almost remember,
another story:

It runs alongside this one like a brook beside a train.
The sparrows know it; the grass rises with it.

The wind moves through the highest tree branches without
seeming to hurt them.

Tell me.
Who was I when I used to call your name?

—Marie Howe

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. My dear BlueIris...

What great imagery!

But I am confused, as usual...

Was she molested?

Or what?

Still, I enjoyed the way it flows...

Thank you!

:hug:

[BlueIris]

2. This poem, like a lot of Marie Howe's work, features a speaker dealing with the long-term

ramifications of child sexual abuse, yeah. In this piece, Howe is describing a speaker coming through the dregs of trauma and grief and feeling touched by divinity, but still distrusting the possibility that life holds a deeper purpose. I've always thought the last line was bitter, but hopeful; "Who was I when I used to call your name?" referring to God, and the speaker's desire to develop the genuine spiritual awareness she lacked in youth.

[BlueIris]

3. Kick.