Poetry Rx: "What Is the Measure"
read Donika Kelly's breathtaking love poem up at Poetry Foundation now
Just dropping in this Monday morning to say hi, and you should consider reading this beautiful poem, “What Is the Measure,” no matter who you are, but especially if you find yourself back at your desk after a quiet weekend in nature.
We spent Sunday climbing Mount Lemmon, first us creatures in the car, then us creatures scrambling by foot— up the Marshall Gulch trail. It was fun to see Chilli (our 8-month-old puppy) trying to sprint vertically. Billie (our 3yo daughter) kept asking, why are we doing this again? Bojan wouldn’t answer for fear of hearing his former self answer (“Hikes are like walks to nowhere”).
So when I came across Donika Kelly’s poem this morning, her refrain, “I submit,” echoed in the pine trees of Arizona’s high desert. I could hear the poet’s footsteps and the creatures burrowing on her trail, and when she gets to the following stanza, I felt seen, asked, too, to submit:
I submit:
As with the mountain,
the field.
As with the field,
you,
ineluctable as a season, sun ragging the rockface.
I love that verb, “ragging” there, which makes me think of my Granny cleaning her kitchen counters, but also of her giving someone a gleefully hard time. I like thinking of the sun as a good-natured, maternal tsk-r. Most of all, I love thinking of the beloved as “ineluctable as a season,” like a long-awaited summer storm moving in, calling you to run outside and throw up your arms and dance in the rain.
Thanks for this poem, Donika Kelly, Poetry Foundation, M., mountains.