To My Twenties; or, The Last Day

The last day of my twenties is off to a nice start. Yesterday I had my first real-life meetup with a bloggy friend, the amazing Such a Good Egg who is in NYC for a wedding. It was great! I feel like she is someone I would be friends with no matter how we met. Thanks for getting together, Egg!

Then I had dinner with my real-life IF friend and learned more about her recent diagnosis and their treatment plans. It was an emotional chat--as it always is with us--but we also laugh a lot. And drink a lot, too.

And now I'm going to polish off an abstract for a conference, head to yoga, and then go see the Cherry Blossoms in the park. I'm a lucky girl with a great life, and today I know it.

TO MY TWENTIES

How lucky that I ran into you
When everything was possible
For my legs and arms, and with hope in my heart
And so happy to see any woman
O woman! O my twentieth year!
Basking in you, you
Oasis from both growing and decay
Fantastic unheard of nine- or ten-year oasis
A palm tree, hey! And then another
And another (and water!)
I’m still very impressed by you. Whither,
Midst falling decades, have you gone? Oh in what lucky fellow,
Unsure of himself, upset, and unemployable
For the moment in any case, do you live now?
From my window I drop a nickel
By mistake. With
You I race down to get it
But I find there on
The street instead, a good friend,
X—- N——, who says to me
Kenneth do you have a minute?
And I say yes! I am in my twenties!
I have plenty of time! In you I marry,
In you I first go to France; I make my best friends
In you, and a few enemies. I
Write a lot and am living all the time
And thinking about living. I loved to frequent you
After my teens and before my thirties.
You three together in a bar
I always preferred you because you were midmost
Most lustrous apparently strongest
Although now that I look back on you
What part have you played?
You never, ever, were stingy.
What you gave me you gave whole
But as for telling
Me how best to use it
You weren’t a genius at that.
Twenties, my soul
Is yours for the asking
You know that, if you ever come back.

- Kenneth Koch

The Miscarriage by Amit Majmudar

I found this poem last night. I liked so much about it-- the author conveys very well the obsession with fecundity that follows the heartbreaking experience of its lack. And the bottlecap reading "Sorry - Try Again" seems like the kind of knife to the gut detail that must come from lived experience. I like that kind of metaphor of the mundane. I also appreciated the male view point on this subject--something I still don't quite understand even after living with it for almost three months.

The Miscarriage

Some species can crack pavement with their shoots

to get their share of sun some species lay

a purple froth of eggs and leave it there

to sprinkle tidepools with tadpole confetti

some species though you stomp them in the carpet

have already stashed away the families

that will inherit every floor at midnight

But others don’t go forth and multiply

as boldly male and female peeling the bamboo

their keepers watching in despair or those

endangered species numbered individually

and mapped from perch to oblivious perch

For weeks the world it seemed was plagued

with babies forests dwindling into cradles

rows of women hissing for an obstetrician

babies no one could feed babies received

by accident like misdirected mail

from God so many babies people hired

women to hold them babies babies everywhere

but not a one to name When we got home

the local news showed us a mother with

quintuplets she was suckling them in shifts

a mountain of sheets universally admired

a goddess of fertility her smile

could persuade the skies to rain Her litter

slept ointment-eyed in pink wool caps while Dad

ran his hand through his hair thinking maybe

of money as he stood surveying his

crowded living room his wealth of heartbeats

Pizza and pop that night and there unasked inside

the bottlecap was Sorry—Try Again

you set it down and did not speak of it

the moon flanked by her brood of stars that night

a chaste distracted kiss goodnight that night

your body quiet having spilled its secret

your palms flat on your belly holding holding

Forgive me if I had no words that night

but I was wondering in the silence still

begetting silence whether to console you

if I consoled you it would make the loss

your loss and so we laid beside ourselves

a while because I had no words until

our bodies folded shut our bodies closed

around hope like a book preserving petals

a book we did not open till the morning when

we found hope dry and brittle but intact

- Amit Majmudar (published in the October 2005 issue of Poetry.)

Tennyson; or, Break, Break, Break

I like to read poetry when I'm sad. I like it when I'm happy too (there's a Christina Rossetti poem I was memorizing for the occasion of the m&m's never-to-be birth), but I especially like it when I'm sad. Tennyson is one of my favorite poets.

Break, break, break
On thy cold grey stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

O well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.

- Alfred Lord Tennyson

Daily Meditation; or The Wisdom of the Middle Ages

All shall be well,
And all shall be well,
And all manner of thing shall be well.

- Julian of Norwich (1342-1416)