Poem-A-Day: Metamorphosis by James Richardson

Metamorphosis   by James Richardson   The week after you died, Mom, you were in my checkout line, little old lady who met my stare with the fear, the yearning of a mortal chosen by a god, feeling herself change painfully cell by cell into a shadow, a laurel, you, a constellation.        Copyright © 2013 by James Richardson. Used with permission of the author.     About This Poem "In Ovid, desire can change anyone into...anything. In the supermarket, it happened just the way the poem says: I'm afraid I met her eyes an instant too long. (When I glimpsed the same woman a few weeks later she didn't look like my mother at all.)"   --James Richardson   Most Recent Book by Richardson By the Numbers (Copper Canyon Press, 2010) Poem-A-Day Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-A-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Browse the Poem-A-Day Archive.   May 28, 2013 James Richardson is the author of several books of poetry, criticism, and aphorisms. His most recent collection of poems is By the Numbers (Copper Canyon Press, 2010). He lives in New Jersey, where he teaches at Princeton University. Related Poems My Mother's Funeral by Ira Sadoff Elegy 5 by Ovid What the Living Do by Marie Howe   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.

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