One Month, One Poem: Goodbye

Photo by john crozier on Unsplash

(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.)

I have neglected writing about my experience with this poem — but for good reason. I noticed that as I was reading the poem, I was already thinking about what I could write here. I was reading for Medium post ideas, and not to immerse myself in these now-familiar words.

I stopped writing about the poem, and just read it. Sometimes in the morning, where the sun touching my bedroom window made me feel removed from the grief and loss Marge Piercy expresses so beautifully.

Most often, though, I read it in the evening, just before bed — usually because I got to the end of my day and realized I hadn’t read it yet.

A marvelous thing happened for me on those evenings. Slowly, gradually, over this month of days, I dropped into the rhythm of the poem, into the world of gray uncertainty that comes after losing a beloved (if complicated) parent. I let the poem carry me on waves of its own creation and land me on a different shore. I let it dance in my dreams, without trying to hold it in place so I could describe it here.

This, my Dear Ones, this is the experience I want everyone to have with poetry. How lovely to…