For Elizabeth Bishop

By Sandra McPherson b. 1943 Sandra McPherson

The child I left your class to have

Later had a habit of sleeping

With her arms around a globe

She’d unscrewed, dropped, and dented.

I always felt she could possess it,

The pink countries and the mauve

And the ocean which got to keep its blue.

Coming from the Southern Hemisphere to teach,

Which you had never had to do, you took

A bare-walled room, alone, its northern

Windowscapes as gray as walls.

To decorate, you’d only brought a black madonna.

I thought you must have skipped summer that year,

Southern winter, southern spring, then north

For winter over again. Still, it pleased you

To take credit for introducing us,

And later to bring our daughter a small flipbook

Of partners dancing, and a ring

With a secret whistle. —All are

Broken now like her globe, but she remembers

Them as I recall the black madonna

Facing you across the room so that

In a way you had the dark fertile life

You were always giving gifts to.

Your smaller admirer off to school,

I take the globe and roll it away: where

On it now is someone like you?

Source: Patron Happiness (Ecco Press, 1983)

Biography

Sandra McPherson weaves vivid images culled from nature into what Contemporary Women Poets contributor David Young characterizes as "rich, complex, and deeply satisfying poems." In collections that include the National Book Award-nominated The Year of Our Birth, 1988's At the Grave of Hazel Hall, and 1996's Edge Effect: Trails and Portrayals, McPherson has increasingly honed her unsentimental, insightful verse, imbuing it with . . .

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