Sharon Olds has one of those moments . . .
May 1968
by: Sharon Olds
until the students gave up the buildings,
we lay down in the street,
we said the cops will enter this gate
over us. Lying back on the cobbles,
I saw the buildings of New York City
from dirt level, they soared up
and stopped, chopped off—above them, the sky,
the night air, over the island.
The mounted police moved, near us,
while we sang, and then I began to count,
12, 13, 14, 15,
I counted again, 15, 16, one
month since the day on that deserted beach,
17, 18, my mouth fell open,
my hair on the street,
if my period did not come tonight
I was pregnant. I could see the sole of a cop's
shoe, the gelding's belly, its genitals—
if they took me to Women's Detention and did
the exam on me, the speculum,
the fingers—I gazed into the horse's tail
like a comet-train. I’d been thinking I might
get arrested, I had been half-wanting
to give myself away. On the tar—
one brain in my head, another
in the making, near the base of my tail—
I looked at the steel arc of the horse's
shoe, the curve of its belly, the cop's
nightstick, the buildings streaming up
away from the earth. I knew I should get up
and leave, but I lay there looking at the space
above us, until it turned deep blue and then
ashy, colorless, Give me this one
night, I thought, and I'll give this child
the rest of my life, the horse's heads,
this time, drooping, dipping, until
they slept in a circle around my body and my daughter.
There’s a lot going on in this tiny moment Olds describes. A student protest. Hostile police. Horses. Possible arrest. An unplanned pregnancy. Whatever happens, the speaker of the poem is never going to be the same again.
I am home again after attending my daughter’s white coat ceremony and spending time with her and her significant other. This morning, we had breakfast with them at IHOP, and then we packed up and hit the road.
Now, that sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? It doesn’t really touch upon how I felt like a piece of myself was dying as I drove away from my daughter who was standing outside her apartment, waving at us. Or how I would just start crying occasionally as the miles between us increased. Or all the government vehicles at Mackinaw City (where we stopped for fudge)—ICE and/or Border Control. Or how moody my 16-year-old son was because he doesn’t really know how to deal with his big emotions. Or the emptiness of being home again, knowing that my daughter is six hours and a new life away.
It’s a big moment of change. Our lives will never be the same again. My daughter is pursuing her dream, and I’m doing my damndest to support her in any way I can. Yet, another part of me mourns for my little girl in pigtails. That’s where I’m stuck, and I think I’m going to be stuck for a while.
Saint Marty wrote a poem about this big moment, based on the following prompt from August 9 of The Daily Poet:
On this day in 1854, Henry David Thoreau published Walden. Write a poem that uses the names of two regional trees in your area and two types of flowers or ground over. Have the poem begin in an urban environment and end in a wooded setting. For extra credit, include a name of a regional bird, shrub, and amphibian.
Spending Time with My Daughter
the Weekend Before She Starts Med School
by: Martin Achatz
A good friend of mine sees
the world we live in
as a shitty place, filled
with Hitlers, Stalins, Trumps.
We exchange text messages
about the ash we’re leaving
for our children to
inherit, we even use
the word apocalypse.
I think we’ve both read
way too much Bukowski.
This weekend before, I am
surrounded by asphalt
and buildings and heat,
progress some people
would call it. I’ve toured
campus, been surrounded
by young people with
faces bright as ripe
apples, my daughter
one of them. All are
living in the future
right now, time travelers
who see themselves
not as “I am”
but “I will.”
For me, an old man
more than halfway
through his “I am,”
I drink their optimism
like gin and tonic
on a 100-degree day,
bitter and sweet.
When I hug
my daughter goodbye
tomorrow, head home
over hundreds
of blacktop miles
(more evidence of our
misguided progress),
I will take
her spirit with me
like a shiny penny
in my pants pocket.
I will cross
the Mackinac Bridge
into a place
that’s been stubborn
in its battle to survive,
a place my daughter
was born, full of
trembling aspen,
sugar maple and lupine,
butterfly weed and wild
turkeys, sweet gale,
and blue-spotted
salamanders crossing
a paved road to
lay their eggs
near the waves
of vast, blue
waters.
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