The next is a poem.
I figure I'm here in a community of a lot of poets,
a lot of readers of poetry, a lot of students of poetry,
teachers of poetry.
And I can kind of let loose and read you longer poems
and read you anything I feel like reading you.
So I'm going from that assumption.
This is a poem in 29 sections called "Contradictions--
Tracking Poems."
And it was written between 1983 and 1985
in New England at a time of a lot
of political and personal upheaval in the world
and in my own life, which I was trying to put together.
And it's a kind of journal poem.
There is a "you" in it which is the beloved of the poet,
the one addressed.
There is a "you" which is a kind of public you.
And there is a "you" which is the you that the poet uses
to address her own self.
So not all these yous are necessarily synchronous.
Look, this is January.
The worst onslaught is ahead of us.
Don't be lured by these soft gray afternoons,
these sunsets cut from pink and violet tissue paper,
by the thought the days are lengthening.
Don't let the solstice fool you.
Our lives will always be a stew of contradictions.
The worst moment of winter can come
in April, when the peepers are stubbornly still,
and our bodies plod on without conviction,
and our thoughts cramp down before the sheer arsenal
of everything that tries us--
this battering, blunt-edged life.