Poem of the Week (excerpt), by Diane Wakoski
My new poems podcast, Words by Winter, can be found here.
Me to the elementary or high school students I sometimes visit in person or via Zoom: Sometimes does it feel like your feelings are too big to hold inside? Like you might explode because life feels so overwhelming?
Heads nod. Hands go up.
Maybe you do something when you feel that way. Maybe some of you run and run, maybe some of you put your music on loud and dance and dance, maybe some of you . . . write?
Everyone always turns quiet. They nod. Maybe we all need a way out, a way to channel and calm and transform the giantness of what it is to be alive in a body in the world. I feel this poem in my very bones.
Thanking My Mother for Piano Lessons (excerpt), by Diane Wakoski
The relief of putting your fingers on the keyboard,
as if you were walking on the beach
and found a diamond
as big as a shoe;
as if
you had just built a wooden table
and the smell of sawdust was in the air,
your hands dry and woody;
as if
you had eluded
the man in the dark hat who had been following you
all week;
the relief
of putting your fingers on the keyboard
For more information about Diane Wakoski, please click here.
Last week I woke up on a cold and windy day and did my own tiny triathlon: jog, kayak, bike. I did this only for myself, for the hell of it, no time pressure, no expectations, no one watching. The jog went well. The kayaking was hard (the wind was so strong it was all I could do to keep from going backward). By the time I got to the bike portion I decided to keep it simple and just ride around the same lake four times like a hamster on a wheel, which was ridiculous and made me laugh. But when I finished my tiny anonymous tri I felt so unexpectedly happy. So grateful for these muscles and bones and heart and lungs. How great and wonderful it is to be alive inside a body.
Sometimes I feel so sad for men. All the unspoken rules. All the ways our culture tries to train boys out of their openness, their gentleness, their human need for hugs and touch. I think of the multiple men I know who have told no one but me the ways they were sexually abused as children. I think of my giant of a father, and the look on his face when he told me how his mother used to scream at him when he was little. I think of all the men I know who depend on the women they love to translate the world of emotion for them, to navigate the nuances of relationships. I think of how sex sometimes seems the only acceptable way for a man to give and receive physical affection, the only time they can let down their guard. 
Most of the furniture in our house is wood, found curbside like the tiny wooden table that caught my eye yesterday a few blocks from home. Polished burled top, slender wooden dowels, sturdy legs, it looked handmade. My backpack was stuffed full of heavy groceries but I picked the table up anyway and carried it home like a baby. 
Here in the Time of Covid, my younger daughter and I have figured out how to maintain her complicated haircut. She does the back and sides with her electric clippers, and then I take over with my scissors, layering the sweep of black hair we refer to as “the plume” and lock by lock trimming and blending the rest. 
From my porch, which is all windows, people walk by in pairs or threes or solo. Some of them stop by my poetry hut and take a poem. Some keep their heads down and never look up. Some are slow and wandery, holding hands and scuffing their feet. Others stare straight ahead and laugh while they chatter to the person on the other end of their earbuds.
Alison McGhee 