December 8, 2025
Monday

There’s a tendency among Holidailies participants to make every piece holiday-centric, be that holiday Christmas or Chanukah (my preferred spelling of the 16 variants purported to exist in English) or Kwanzaa or Bodhi Day, or . . . I was tired last night after my outing to see The Nutcracker and fell into that habit, writing something of a review and trying to tie it to the Second Sunday in Advent. Most of my blog work is first-draft-and-a-half stuff. Last night’s was frankly first draft (what a veteran journaller from the early days called the “Spit, Glance, Upload” method). I’m not even sure I took much of a glance.

I woke this morning determined to do something different, not just with this ritualized posting I’ve committed to, but with my whole day. I decided to feed my desire to resume my life as a literary citizen. Thus did I open The Best American Poetry 2025, downloaded to my Kindle as soon as it became available. (The decision to eschew a physical copy was part of my effort to curtail adding things to what has been called my “amazing clutter,” particularly my burgeoning book clutter.)

I chose “At the Gate,” a villanelle by Indran Amirthanayagam, a multi-talented poet, editor, publisher, translator, polyglot, born in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1960. He says he usually writes in free verse, but that this poem, about caring for his mother in the last year of her life, when she suffered from memory loss and the inability to move. He was inspired by Dylan Thomas’s famous villanelle for his father, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.” I reproduce it here because it is impossible right now to find it online to link to.

At the Gate

My mother lies down in her bed to wait,
in a white robe, hair spread on the pillow.
Tomorrow an angel will arrive at her gate.

My mother said she couldn’t rise, even late,
and to take her to a nursing home tomorrow.
My mother lies down in her bed to wait.

She speaks to her aunt, her mater and pater.
She wants to fly to Ceylon to a bungalow.
Tomorrow an angel will arrive at her gate.

Try to move your fingers, feet, shift your gait.
Try to straighten your legs, temple unfurrow.
My mother lies down in her bed to wait.

Try, try, fall, try again. This is not fate
This is obstinacy and wisdom, not sorrow.
Tomorrow an angel will arrive at her gate.

I will wait by the gate, Mummy, and tell fate,
that angel, to give us ’til tomorrow.
My mother lies down in her bed to wait.
Tomorrow an angel will arrive at her gate.

This poem fed me today. It’s about loss, and grief, and the complicated form it uses reminds me how the two are intertwined with the rest of our lives, what we do professionally, how we move back and forth among all our roles and obligations. And it helped me expand my author choices, beyond the WASP-ish lot who are so very like me, except more talented. I also came to understand that I don’t really like reading a book on a Kindle.

I’ve spit. I’ve glanced. I’m uploading now.

Thank you for reading. See you tomorrow.