All sorrows can be borne if we put them in a story.
But those pears, honey, those pears were real sweet.
All sorrows can be borne if we put them in a story.
Without them is the rest of my life.
All sorrows can be borne if we put them in a story.
Under this wallpaper of willow leaves and birds
is another one with loops of small roses.
Under the yellow roses is lumber that was timber,
a stand of burr oak, maple or pine felled by an ax
that was ore deep in the earth before smelting.
That was ore deep in the earth before smelting.
Photographs fade to a sepia wash.
Still she tells who sat with Aunt Anna
on the front steps in Omaha, Did you get
what you wanted?, who moved West and never wrote again,
who waltzed with Isaac and did you get what you wanted
from this life, even so?
My body split open. And lava flowed?
I became a trellis. With tangled vines?
My mother wrapped herself in wind?
Twice I clambered up on the silver table.
The new moon lay in the old moon’s arms.
The whole point of composing is to sound inevitable.
Attribution of italicized lines
Stanza 1-Isek Dinesen Stanza 2-Kate Barnes Stanza 3-Raymond Carver Stanza 4-Aaron Copland
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