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One Month, One Poem: Coat
(The month of September, I am reading “My mother’s body” by Marge Piercy every day. I am also coming here as many days as possible to share what happens for me when you visit a poem so often.)
The deep, endless caverns of grief and compassion rule today. This is where I have entered the poem, and where I find myself now, humming to myself and hearing my own voice reverberate off the walls.
These lines begin section 3 of the poem:
What is this mask of skin we wear,
what is this dress of flesh,
this coat of few colors and little hair?
These lines struck me the first time I read the poem. It was a superficial little note, a light tap against the edge of a singing bowl that made my ears tingle. I was delighted by this rhyme that Piercy placed so well to draw the attention back in the middle of a longer poem. And this succinct but accurate description fo the human body brings me so much joy. So clever.
The lines that follow explore how the bodies we inherited both rest comfortably on our bones, and create the most discomfort. These lines sunk in deeper today. It must be the perfection of the day, or the way the evening light is hitting the vase of flowers on my shelf. Whatever the reason, I felt an intense and primal longing when I read these lines. The voice I hear for these lines is keening, speaking into a wind that carries the words away as soon as they are spoken.
I stepped deeply into this section of the poem, and for the rest of it I feel the grief of loss, the regret of a lifetime, and the compassion for unacknowledged suffering coming through. I feel a daughter trying to find a way to uncomplicate her complicated grief.
I read the poem today and felt as if I had gone underwater, past the place where you can see the light on the surface. Now that I am back up again, watching the evening light move up my walls, I treasure every breath of free air.
