Poetry Friday: Richard Wilbur, "The Writer"

Although I've shared Richard Wilbur's "The Writer" numerous times (along with loads of other Wilbur treasures), I never tire of this gorgeous poem. It fits beautifully with the relationship theme I've been chasing — this week, we drop in on a father and his junior-high-school-aged daughter. (I love the final lines so much.) 

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,

(Read the rest here, at Poets.org. And to hear Richard Wilbur read it, go here.)

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The fabulous Tabatha Yeatts has the Poetry Friday round-up this week at The Opposite of Indifference.