Classic and Contemporary Poetry
A SENSE OF DIRECTION, by KAREN SWENSON Poet's Biography First Line: It was moonless the night I drove my son Last Line: Am shivering in its draft. Subject(s): Fathers & Daughters; Maps; Mothers & Sons | ||||||||
It was moonless the night I drove my son to the Fargo airport after my father's burial. Coming back I lost myself - not so much in the streets, which weave together neatly as a tic-tac-toe box, but on the roads of an internal map I lost my bearings as I wandered between airport and graveyard. Those two male lives which bordered mine, like railroad tracks constricting it at times, now follow their own compass. I drive alone, all direction lost to the dark in which I cannot find my father's voice, although my son's holds my ear, a fading diesel call. The wind comes in my window like the breath of silence where my father spoke. It is as if the opening of the earth for him has left some door ajar and I, in this vast room of fields, am shivering in its draft. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE JEWELS AND THE GRACCHI by JOHN HOLLANDER A MOUNTAIN MOTHER by WILLIAM ASPENWALL BRADLEY SONG: EARLY DEATH OF THE MOTHER by GREGORY ORR POEM FOR MY SONS by MINNIE BRUCE PRATT DOORS, DOORS, DOORS: 2. SEAMSTRESS by ANNE SEXTON |
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