Natural Disaster

The earthquake in Haiti has made everything I had thought about writing here today seem ridiculously insignificant. So I'll just share this poem with you from one of my favorite poets, Sharon Olds. I read her poem "True Love" at my wedding in 1995, and another of her poems, "Topography," at my niece's wedding this past summer. She has a way of saying it just so. I was exactly like this when I was 8. I still am, sometimes.

(P.S. Photos from our trip to Boston last weekend are in the slideshow at the bottom of the page.)

[Image: Self-portrait with photo, sketch, and journal entry]


The Talk

In the sunless wooden room at noon
the mother had a talk with her daughter.
The rudeness could not go on, the meanness
to her little brother, the selfishness.
The eight-year-old sat on the bed
in the corner of the room, her irises distilled as
the last drops of something, her firm
face melting, reddening,
silver flashes in her eyes like distant
bodies of water glimpsed through woods.
She took it and took it and broke, crying out
I hate being a person! diving
into the mother
as if
into
a deep pond—and she cannot swim,
the child cannot swim.