I was introduced to the poetry of Michelle Boisseau when her husband was a professor of mine at the University of Missouri, Columbia. He was an energetic linguist who made me love the OED and diagramming sentences so complex we had to paste paper together across a classroom wall for them to make sense. He mentioned once or twice that his wife was a poet, so I investigated and bought one of her books. Understory. It is her second book, and quickly became one of my favorites. This poem, unnatural nature, was inspired by Blood Sonata from Understory.
Written long before I had my own children, it highlights a belief that each new adventure started, or part left behind, was some sort of "birth". It was like starting over. But this isn't really what becoming a mother is like at all. When I gave birth, I didn't begin again, I reconnected to my past more concretely. Like the double helix of our DNA, my life as a mother now spirals upward connecting to all the people and moments that defined me, over and over, through multiple dimensions.
To be honest, I don't really like this poem. I'm not sure where I was going with it, or maybe am just too disconnected from it, but I do like what it reminds me of. I'm not sure it will remind anyone else about anything at all, though. Every time I open up this post, I make a revision to it. Who knows which version you are reading.
Written long before I had my own children, it highlights a belief that each new adventure started, or part left behind, was some sort of "birth". It was like starting over. But this isn't really what becoming a mother is like at all. When I gave birth, I didn't begin again, I reconnected to my past more concretely. Like the double helix of our DNA, my life as a mother now spirals upward connecting to all the people and moments that defined me, over and over, through multiple dimensions.
To be honest, I don't really like this poem. I'm not sure where I was going with it, or maybe am just too disconnected from it, but I do like what it reminds me of. I'm not sure it will remind anyone else about anything at all, though. Every time I open up this post, I make a revision to it. Who knows which version you are reading.
unnatural nature
reading Blood Sonata during take-off,
thinking of MacDuff and his mother
who never gave birth
like Boisseau.
i wanted
this birth into polluted air
to be made pure
by thoughts of you,
slept with the phone
against my pillow,
security for dreams where
we travel through windows.
water gradually became
not cold, rinsed
the undisturbed sleep, and
relinquished my fantasy,
somewhat.
dad chauffeured me to the airport,
we talked over expensive doughnuts
and paper-cup coffee
until it was time to watch the day streak pink and blue
through golden gleams off silver propellors.
i return to Blood Sonata,
"The female is
as it were
a deformed male." *
©Erin Croley
*Aristotle, from Michelle Boisseau's Blood Sonata
reading Blood Sonata during take-off,
thinking of MacDuff and his mother
who never gave birth
like Boisseau.
i wanted
this birth into polluted air
to be made pure
by thoughts of you,
slept with the phone
against my pillow,
security for dreams where
we travel through windows.
water gradually became
not cold, rinsed
the undisturbed sleep, and
relinquished my fantasy,
somewhat.
dad chauffeured me to the airport,
we talked over expensive doughnuts
and paper-cup coffee
until it was time to watch the day streak pink and blue
through golden gleams off silver propellors.
i return to Blood Sonata,
"The female is
as it were
a deformed male." *
©Erin Croley
*Aristotle, from Michelle Boisseau's Blood Sonata
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