Poetry Magazine
Twenty-third
And at the picnic table under the ancient elms,
one of my parents turned to me and said:
“We hope you end up here,”
where the shade relieves the light, where we sit
in some beneficence—and I felt the shape of the finite
after my ether life: the ratio, in all dappling,
of dark to bright; and yet how brief my stay would be
under the trees, because the voice I’d heard
could not cradle me, could no longer keep me
in greenery; and I would have to say good-bye
again, make my way across the white
California sand and back: or am I now creating
the helplessness I heard those words express,
the psalm torn like a map in my hands?
Source: Poetry (February 2006).
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This poem originally appeared in the February 2006 issue of Poetry magazine
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Biography
Christina Pugh's third book of poems is Grains of the Voice (Northwestern University Press, 2013). She is an associate professor in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and consulting editor for Poetry.
Poem Categorization
SUBJECT Nature, Living, Coming of Age, Landscapes & Pastorals, Parenthood
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Poetry Lectures: Poetry and Piano
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