WEBVTT

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This is called The
History of My Feeling

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and it's one of
the poems I wrote

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when I was living in Portland.

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I was teaching at Reed
College for a year.

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And it was a pretty
dark time for me,

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but it just rained constantly.

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I read a poem to
one of the workshops

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this afternoon that I wrote in
February after it had literally

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been raining every day since--

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well, John and Barbara
were there that same year.

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They can vouch for it.

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It had been raining
since September.

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Or if the water wasn't
literally collecting in the air,

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it was hanging in this large
gray thing over the city.

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Anyway, so all of my
poems that I wrote,

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they had rain in them,
literally, as does this.

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And this also goes
back to Iowa City,

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where I had been
teaching the year before.

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It's called The
History of My Feeling.

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The history of my
feeling for you or is it

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the way you change and
are blameless like clouds?

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Reminds me of the
sky in Portland

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and the morning I unpacked
and found the white plates

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from Iowa City
broken, consistently

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surprising with cracks.

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Petals like new math
theories smashed

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with the purposeful
fingers of chance.

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I love the plates.

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They were remnants from an
auction which still goes on

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in my head because of
the auctioneer's body

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and his sexy insinuations
about the goods he was selling.

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But to Ruth, who talked
them into their thin wraps

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of newspaper, what
we were sharing

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was departure and two
lives breaking and learning

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to mend into new forms.

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We had loved our husbands,
torn our bodies in classic ways

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to bear children,
Sammy, David, Wesley.

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Now we love new men
and wept together

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so that the plates
weren't important

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and hadn't been packed
with the care I might

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have given had I been alone.

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But Ruth was with me.

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You were gone like
this storm that's

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been arriving and
disappearing all morning.

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I awoke to hear heavy
rain in the gutters.

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The light was uncertain and my
feelings had grown less sure.

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Last night, pinned by a
shaft of pain, your presence

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and your absence.

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I knew clearly that I hated
you for entering me profoundly,

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for taking me inside you, for
husbanding me, claiming all

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that I knew and
did not know, yet

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letting me go from you into
this unpredictable and loneliest

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of weathers.

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