Family

By Josephine Miles 1911–1985 Josephine Miles

When you swim in the surf off Seal Rocks, and your family

Sits in the sand

Eating potato salad, and the undertow

Comes which takes you out away down

To loss of breath loss of play and the power of play

Holler, say

Help, help, help. Hello, they will say,

Come back here for some potato salad.

It is then that a seventeen-year-old cub

Cruising in a helicopter from Antigua,

A jackstraw expert speaking only Swedish

And remote from this area as a camel, says

Look down there, there is somebody drowning.

And it is you. You say, yes, yes,

And he throws you a line.

This is what is called the brotherhood of man.

Source: Collected Poems 1930-83 (University of Illinois Press, 1983)

Biography

Lifelong California resident Josephine Miles distinguished herself as an educator, spending her entire academic career at the University of California, Berkeley, where she was the first woman to be tenured in the English department. She is remembered as the editor of anthologies and critical texts, as an author of books on poetic style and language, and as an award-winning poet who produced over a dozen books of poems. Her . . .

Continue reading this biography