poems about letting go

Poem of the Week, by Ada Limón

Posted on by alisonmcghee

There’s plenty of room left in our two remaining half-day online workshops: The Art of Writing Picture Books, September 9 and Poetry, from Flicker to Flame, September 10. Click here for all the details – all our workshops are exhilarating, no-pressure, and designed for writers of any or no experience. I’d love to see you in the Zoom room. 

In one short year I have watched a new family member transform herself from newborn, with that lalala newborn cry, into a toddler who zooms around her apartment on a foot-powered trike. She reaches for Goodnight Gorilla and points to every animal in it by name. She doesn’t see the point of grass and tries to brush it off the ground with her hands.

She’ll generously offer wood chips to a playground friend, take them back if the friend tries to eat them, and roll her eyes because she knows it makes us all laugh.

These babies! They come out fully formed, exactly who they are, ready to run. This poem goes out to all you parents dropping your kids off at college or sending them back to school.

What I Didn’t Know Before, by Ada Limón

was how horses simply give birth to other
horses. Not a baby by any means, not
a creature of liminal spaces, but a four-legged
beast hellbent on walking, scrambling after
the mother. A horse gives way to another
horse and then suddenly there are two horses,
just like that. That’s how I loved you. You, 
off the long train from Red Bank carrying
a coffee as big as your arm, a bag with two
computers swinging in it unwieldily at your
side. I remember we broke into laughter
when we saw each other. What was between
us wasn’t a fragile thing to be coddled, cooed
over. It came out fully formed, ready to run.

For more information about Ada Limón, whose poems are beloved to me, please visit her website.

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Poem of the Week, by Derek Walcott

Posted on by alisonmcghee

IMG_0342People who say they have “no regrets” mystify me. Regrets, oh I’ve got a few. Like last night when I couldn’t get back to sleep for thinking about the times I yelled at my children when they were little. This didn’t happen much, but every time it did, my self-hatred was huge. It still is. As a mother I wanted always and only to be a comfort to my kids. But when you’re yelling, you’re not a comfort, are you?

In the dark hours before dawn, in hopes of forgiving myself by understanding myself, I tried to see myself as the little girl I used to be, the child who, like all children, had little control over her own life. No dice.

This morning I wrote notes to my children, telling them how sorry I was for having yelled. Because what else can I do? You can’t go back in time and undo things. Then my favorite line from this beautiful poem —give back your heart to itself–drifted into my head. 

 

Love After Love, by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

For more information about Derek Walcott, please click here.