Vignette - Poem

Poetry is one of my first loves, and I find some poems are constant companions. Some old friends, like this one, visit me in snippets while during the day, popping into my head unbidden.  Tess Gallagher's poem, "I Stop Writing the Poem." is a recent visitor of mine. I got it from Garrison Keillor's edited collection of poetry, Good Poems, which is one of my favorite anthologies of poetry. Reading an amazing poem is like eating a great piece of chocolate for me--I swoon. This one does it for me.

I Stop Writing the Poem

to fold the clothes. No matter who lives

or who dies, I'm still a woman.

I'll always have plenty to do. 

I bring the arms of his shirt

together. Nothing can stop

our tenderness. I'll get back

to the poem. I'll get back to being

a woman. But for now

there's a shirt, a giant shirt

in m hands, and somewhere a small girl

standing next to her mother

watching to see how it's done.