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Friday, March 22, 2013

Poem-A-Day: Ring by Melissa Stein

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Ring
by Melissa Stein
 

Control was all
I wanted: a handle
on the day, the night
when it curved,
when it swayed,
when I could sense
the teeming stars
in light, in dark
the sun's bare wire.
Some switch
to turn it off:
each shadow
pinned to each tree
like a radius
of some infant's
milk it spilled.
And the leaves,
their gossip
of claw and beak
and wind and heat
and wing. Tether
lake to bank and
cloud to peak.
And weather it.
Weather it. All this
to say I've
taken off my ring.


Copyright © 2013 by Melissa Stein. Used with permission of the author.
About this Poem:
 
"During a writing residency at the Blue Mountain Center, I read Major Jackson's poem "On Removing the Wedding Band" in Holding Company, and it hit me with agonizing clarity. In that Adirondack setting, it combined with an experience that had recently drop-kicked me out of my comfort zone and set me thinking about the notions we hold of stability and commitment, sparking this poem about veering toward and away--or maybe just veering."

Melissa Stein
Poetry by Stein

Rough Honey

 

Poem-A-Day launched in 2006 and features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.

 

Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.
March 22, 2013

Melissa Stein is the author of Rough Honey (Copper Canyon Press, 2010), which was selected by Mark Doty for the APR/Honickman First Book Prize. She is a freelance editor and writer in San Francisco.

Related Poems
by Jack Gilbert
by Major Jackson
by Mark Doty

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