Today's poem is Introduction by Madeline Miele. It is read by Gibson Fay-LeBlanc.
Introduction
I was myself beside myself. That is where the poem
starts. It has to start there because the poem must
come from pain. In the poem, it is all emblem. My father
was gone and then my mother too. I was a child. I only knew
them in relation. Now there should be a turn
toward the natural world. Something about the light
or the fields of my childhood. There was an ocean, tall
grasses I did not see singly or stilled. It was always almost
winter light, the landscape gold then muted then back
to gold. There was always nothing to be done. I waited
for season. For someone to come. I crouched
in those tall grasses and pulled their roots up
from the sand. I called names so hard the sound circled
around the harbor and got lost. Now I need
to ask the poem a question it will not answer. Why
do we call back to us the things that want to be gone?
My second chance was this: one day I would leave
that life beside the sea and not think about the grasses
or the roots that lifted from the ground so easy
it was like they had never had reason to hold on to anything.