{"id":551,"date":"2008-12-08T13:20:27","date_gmt":"2008-12-08T17:20:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/?p=551"},"modified":"2008-12-08T13:35:23","modified_gmt":"2008-12-08T17:35:23","slug":"she-and-not-another","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/?p=551","title":{"rendered":"She and Not Another"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"December 8, 2008
\nMonday<\/strong><\/p>\n

Where is she now, the child
\nwho made this house her own dominion?
\nHow easily she has closed the door
\non the props of ritual afternoons\u00c2\u00a0 . . .
\n[I} wake to the whippoorwill calling her name,
\nmine, outside the cold casement. . . .
\nAgain the whippoorwill calls,
\nAnd again it does.
\nBut the child is gone.
\nThe house stands empty.
\n<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Elizabeth Spires, b. 1952
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 American poet<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I am headed\u00c2\u00a0later to Washington, D.C. for the Folger Shakespeare Library’s annual Emily Dickinson birthday tribute. I first undertook this trip, which I describe here<\/a> as “essentially my family’s Christmas present to me,” in 1999. The speaker then was Elizabeth Spires, and it is she who will appear again tonight. My trip this year is not so much a desire to celebrate Emily Dickinson’s birthday as it is to see Elizabeth Spires again.<\/p>\n

I made the decision to go this year in October, when I received the Folger’s announcement of the season’s lineup, in particular the ED tribute poet. In 1999 I really didn’t know much about Elizabeth Spires. I said that I was drawn to her work from her inclusion in a book of poetry writing exercises I was using at the time, although I do not now remember the exercise nor anything that might have proceeded from it.<\/p>\n

We arrived at the Folger together about forty minutes before the program, and she introduced herself on the steps. She must have walked from the Metro station, and there was no one from the sponsoring organization to greet her. There was something about Elizabeth Spires the person that really affected me. Her voice, her demeanor, the content of her work, all combined to make me want to be just like her. I decided during\u00c2\u00a0her reading that I would\u00c2\u00a0make\u00c2\u00a02000 the Year of Writing Seriously. I\u00c2\u00a0attended my first writing workshop in ten years a month later, and I’ve been moving forward (if slowly) ever since.<\/p>\n

Since making the reservations for this event in October I reread the\u00c2\u00a0collection I bought in 1999. Worldling<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0is dedicated to the poet’s daughter, Celia Dovell, who was born in January of 1991. Spires was\u00c2\u00a0almost thirty-nine, about the same age I was when Lynn was born, and in her poetry I find the same sense of joy and heartbreak I have known as I raised Lynn. Spires puts into words what every mother must learn: you carry your child first as a seed, then as a fetus that grows inside you until she has to break forth and start moving away from you. You wonder, especially if you are the mother of an only child, why this one, why the union of of that sperm with this egg and not the ones\u00c2\u00a0that might have met\u00c2\u00a0the month before or the month after,\u00c2\u00a0How of all the million millions it is you, you who are with me and not another. <\/em>Celia Dovell was four years old when her mother wrote the poems.\u00c2\u00a0Lynn was fourteen when I read them the first time.<\/p>\n

Part of my fascination with Chloe yesterday<\/a> in church was the way she reminded me of Lynn at that age \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the hair caught back in a band, the knit dress, the leggings, the solemn attention to both\u00c2\u00a0the liturgy\u00c2\u00a0and the letter she was writing to her teacher. Lynn is twenty-three now, and later I will go into her room, where I keep my overnight bag. It is empty of her but not the props of so much of her former life. Celia Dovell is about to turn eighteen. I expect we’ll hear some new work born of her mother’s continuing process of letting her go.<\/p>\n

*********<\/p>\n

A year ago<\/a>, I attended a Christmas Open House and Carol Sing at the public library in Story, Wyoming.<\/p>\n

Two years ago<\/a>, I attended a harp concert.<\/p>\n

Three years ago<\/a>, I whined about attending a holiday event I wasn’t assertive enough to say no to.<\/p>\n

Four years ago<\/a>, a leaky pipe caused a\u00c2\u00a0big\u00c2\u00a0hole in the ceiling of the kitchen four days before my party, and I thought it would be amusing to stick a Santa boot in it, that’s how relaxed I was.<\/p>\n

To be included on the notify list, e-mail me:
\nmargaretdeangelis [at] gmail [dot] com (replace the brackets with @ and a period)<\/em><\/p>\n


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