I Was Always Leaving

By Jean Nordhaus b. 1939 Jean Nordhaus

I was always leaving, I was

about to get up and go, I was

on my way, not sure where.

Somewhere else. Not here.

Nothing here was good enough.

It would be better there, where I

was going. Not sure how or why.

The dome I cowered under

would be raised, and I would be released

into my true life. I would meet there

the ones I was destined to meet.

They would make an opening for me

among the flutes and boulders,

and I would be taken up. That this

might be a form of death

did not occur to me. I only know

that something held me back,

a doubt, a debt, a face I could not

leave behind. When the door

fell open, I did not go through.

Poem copyright ©2008 by Jean Nordhaus, whose most recent book of poems is Innocence, Ohio State University Press, 2006. Poem reprinted from The Gettysburg Review, Vol. 21, no. 4, Winter, 2008, by permission of Jean Nordhaus and the publisher.

Biography

Poet Jean Nordhaus earned an undergraduate degree in philosophy from Barnard College and a PhD in German literature from Yale University. She is the author of the poetry chapbook A Language of Hands (1982) as well as the collections A Bracelet of Lies (1987), The Porcelain Apes of Moses Mendelssohn (2002), and Innocence (2006).

Exploring the dramatic monologue in The Porcelain Apes of Moses Mendelssohn, Nordhaus depicts the . . .

Continue reading this biography