Sometimes, we keep secrets that are too embarrassing or too personal to share with others. Other times, those secrets are gifts that carry only private significance. (Nobody in Charles Foster Kane’s life knew that a sled was his most prized possession.)
Poets, in their enigmatic ways, share secrets. We tell the truth, but, as Emily Dickinson said, we tell it slant.
Sharon Olds shares a secret . . .
The Lifting
by: Sharon Olds
turned my head away but he cried out
Shar!, my nickname, so I turned and looked.
He was sitting in the high cranked-up bed with the
gown up, around his neck,
to show me the weight he had lost. I looked
where his solid ruddy stomach had been
and I saw the skin fallen into loose
soft hairy rippled folds
lying in a pool of folds
down at the base of his abdomen,
the gaunt torso of a big man
who will die soon. Right away
I saw how much his hips are like mine,
the lengthened, white angles, and then
how much his pelvis is shaped like my daughter's,
a chambered whelk-shell hollowed out,
I saw the folds of skin like something
poured, a thick batter, I saw
his rueful smile, the cast-up eyes as he
shows me his old body, he knows
I will be interested, he knows I will find him
appealing. If anyone had ever told me
I would sit by him and he would pull up his nightie
and I’d look at his naked body, at the thick
bud of his glans in all that
sparse hair, look at him
in affection and uneasy wonder
I would not have believed it. But now I can still
see the tiny snowflakes, white and
night-blue, on the cotton of the gown as it
rises the way we were promised at death it would rise,
the veils would fall from our eyes, we would know everything.
sparse hair, look at him
in affection and uneasy wonder
I would not have believed it. But now I can still
see the tiny snowflakes, white and
night-blue, on the cotton of the gown as it
rises the way we were promised at death it would rise,
the veils would fall from our eyes, we would know everything.
Family members share intimate secrets. Near the end of his life, my father suffered from dementia. Always a very proud, independent man, he struggled with the diminishments he had to endure, including losing control of his bladder and bowels. One of the only times I ever saw him naked was when I helped my sister clean him up after he soiled himself just a few weeks before he ended up in a nursing home.
That’s what Olds is talking about in today’s poem—those kinds of naked truths we carry around.
It was a quiet day after a pretty busy holiday weekend. It was around 20 degrees cooler than yesterday, which made me tired. After a couple days of near 90-degree weather, it was welcome relief. I napped, read, went for a couple walks, and grocery shopped.
My secret tonight is that I’m not looking forward to the upcoming week. On Saturday, as I’ve said, my daughter and her significant other are moving downstate. While I’m excited for her, my father heart is breaking a little bit. I know, this time next week, I’m going to be an emotional mess. Letting go is a part of parenting. I’m well aware of this fact. That doesn’t make it any easier.
I don’t want to make this separation any harder on my daughter, so I’m going to put on a happy face. Try not to cry too much. For close to a quarter century, I’ve been her protector and provider and advisor. That’s all going to be gone, and I’m going to have to figure out my new role as a father. It’s a tale as old as time, as Angela Lansbury sang.
If you are so inclined, say a few prayers for my daughter this week. It’s a big change in her life. Maybe she’s feeling doubts right now. Having some misgivings. Those are the kinds of things we all keep secret. But, this father knows that she’s going to change the world.
Saint Marty wrote a poem about unraveling secrets, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:
Open up a box of stored holiday decorations or visit a holiday website (Oriental Trading has an extensive online catalog), and study the nativity tablecloths, candles, snowman mugs, and menorahs. If you don’t want to think about the holidays in July, open a catch-all drawer and take out a few odd items. Write a poem in the voice of a future anthropologist attempting to make sense of these “artifacts.”
Christmas Anthropology
by: Martin Achatz
I want to surround myself with Christmas
cards when I die, the way those old
pharaohs packed food and slaves and gold
cats in their tombs after they exited
the fleshy miracles of their bodies. When
anthropologists unearth my grave,
they’ll find glittery stars, Charlie Brown,
Jimmy Stewart hugging Donna Reed,
the Grinch grinning like Osiris when the Nile
overflowed. Perhaps the anthropologists
will use some Rosetta Stone to decipher
why that figure is half-boy/half pink rabbit.
Why that caribou’s snout glows red
as Sekhmet’s thirsty tongue. Or why
that snowman’s eyes remind them
of the burnished black face of Anubis.
Maybe it will take centuries to decode
the mystery of my burial site, new
software to unscramble the Hallmark
complexities of my artifacts. Then, one day,
when some eager researcher unbinds
the Gordian knot of me, they will install
a plaque above the entrance to my
exhibit in the British Museum of Natural History:
You’ll shoot your eye out, kid!
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