I was talking a bit today in Barbara Anderson's class
about the way in which, or a way in which,
my poetry changed when I became a parent.
And what I said then was that I started
to see in objects that had hitherto been
innocent and incapable of working harm
a capacity for devastation--
stairs, objects on a table, corners,
things that you could fall off of,
things that could come down on you.
The whole world changes.
And I discovered that I was writing poems of peril--
the peril that the world can be to children.
And some of these poems were fairly general and others more
particular to my own history--
I found opened up to me a part of that history
I had not yet felt called to.
I had a sister who died before I was born at nine days old.
It would seem that, as losses go that wouldn't
be too hard to bear.
I wasn't, after all, there when it happened.
But there's a way in which my family
formed around her absence.
I'd like to read a series of poems-- three poems--
written about my sister, and then I'll
read several more about children in general.
This poem, like "The Garden," has one title and then titles
for the individual poems.
And the single title is "Descending Figure."
The only thing I think you need to know
is that the middle section describes a painting.
"The Wanderer."
At twilight, I went into the street,
the sun hung low in the iron sky, ringed with cold plumage.
If I could write to you about this emptiness--
along the curb, groups of children
were playing in the dry leaves.
Long ago, at this hour, my mother stood at the lawn's edge
holding my little sister.
Everyone was gone I was playing in the dark street
with my other sister, whom death had made so lonely.
Night after night, we watched the screened porch filling
with a gold magnetic light.
Why was she never called?
Often, I would let my own name glide past me,
though I craved its protection.