The Touchstone Of Poetry

"Wonder - is not precisely Knowing." Emily Dickinson

(art by Alexandra Duprez)

Tending to my Mother as she was dying of cancer was physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually exhausting. Whenever I would go to my parents’ house to relieve my Father, I found my Mother irritable, tired, in a great deal of pain as the caner spread through her body. A woman who had once found comfort in her faith, now found herself filled with great doubts.

Sometimes I would tend to her garden for her. She would watch from her second floor bedroom widow - often displeased and in disapproval. Because she did not feel in control of her own life, she decided that she would be in control of those who were there to help her.

Nothing was ever good enough and it was futile to try and please her. Nothing soothed her spirit. I didn’t know what to do - until I turned to something that had always grounded and rooted me: poetry. Since she found herself in a valley of great doubt and could no longer find the words to pray, I offered her poems. Poems had become a form of prayer for me. Simone Weil wrote, “Attention taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer.” That’s what poems were for me - attention to its highest degree. Poetry bade me take notice, to pay attention, to be aware and present. I had to be whenever I was with my dying Mother.

I began to bring collections of poetry with me and I would sit by her bed and read to her. Now I have loved poetry ever since I was a child and my Great-Aunt Annie gave me an illustrated copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses. She had been an English teacher and her house was full of books, especially poetry, which was her passion. It was one she had passed on to me. I remember her reading poems to me in her garden with her distinctly Southern cadence and drawl. I didn’t understand what all the poems meant but I loved the sound of the language.