Poetry Friday : (My daughter) The Writer

Because everyone with a writing daughter should read Richard Wilbur's The Writer.

(And apparently, I think it should be read every four months ... I first posted it about eight months ago, then mentioned it again four months later. And again now. I didn't realize I had this poem on a schedule, but clearly I do.)

Because my daughter wrote our Christmas letter this year.

Because I love to hear her voice on paper.

Because my second daughter, my poet, writes too.

Because Ramona says things like, "Exclaimed the mommy in the blue shirt."

Because each of my daughters will "batter against the brilliance" but finally beat that "smooth course for the right window."

Because when they have flown, I will remember the way they looked, hunched over a keyboard, frowning and driven, tapping out their dreams and searching hard for who they are.


The Writer

by Richard Wilbur

In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.

I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash

And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark

And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk-top

....

(read the rest of the poem here ... listen to it here.)

The entire Poetry Friday round-up can be found at The Book Mine Set.