When I read poets and look forward to their next books, then that poet passes, it's like watching rope slip off a ledge, one I thought I'd tied firmly behind me, but suddenly--whoosh!--it's gone. That sense of betrayal and disbelief at the empty air--it's like the moment you discover the person who you thought loved you, didn't really--a stripping-away moment.
I've been thinking of the opposite of that moment. Wouldn't it be great to know the instant a new poet came into the world, to walk through a maternity ward and know that one of those callow faces was going to write the poem that someday, might save your sanity? What a wonderful thing that would be. It would be something like falling in love, but a little bit different, more like falling in awe, falling in limerence, being sublimely gobsmacked with gratitude.
Isn't that what happens when THAT book comes along? I've had THAT book, the book that I can't bear to take out of my purse, the one I must have on me at all times, so I can read THAT poem, the one that looked right through me, the one that spoke my secret name.
I want more of those days.
In above photo: Nonna Luisa, Jordan
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