the perfection of poetry

Thanks to the wisdom of this lovely mama, I signed up for the Writer’s Almanac daily newsletter a few months ago. Generally speaking, I hate email newsletters – I never read them, I always unsubscribe from them, I delete them as soon as they hit my screen. But this daily dose of poetry? I can’t wait for it to arrive.

This week brought an absolute perfection to my inbox, Mid-February by Ann Campanella. The first lines drew me in, a recognition of the winter thaw I walk through right now:

The day is warm and dank as early summer.
Crows scream and pitch in the woods
like the ruckus of old women fighting
for the shreds of their lives.

Each stanza found me nodding my head to its truth:

I am waiting for the sun to shine again,
to learn how to unfurl my heart in its warmth.
These days, neither long nor short, bright nor dark,
wet nor dry, fill me with a sadness I cannot name.

And the very last verse left me breathless:

This morning, the doctor taps his pencil
against the screen. A six-week ultrasound.
There, that’s the heartbeat.
A tiny flutter outlined by grey.

That beauty, my friends, is why I cannot live without poetry. To me, it is breath and life.

Read the whole thing here. Then subscribe to it for yourselves. I doubt you will regret.

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