"Magnitude and Bond" by Nicole Terez Dutton

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend Support Poem-a-Day October 25, 2019   Magnitude and Bond   Nicole Terez Dutton

More than anything, I need this boy so close to my ears, his questions electric as honeybees in an acreage of goldenrod and aster. And time where we are, slow sugar in the veins of white pine, rubbery mushrooms cloistered at their feet. His tawny listening at the water's edge, shy antlers in pooling green light, while we consider fox prints etched in clay. I need little black boys to be able to be little black boys, whole salt water galaxies in cotton and loudness—not fixed in stunned suspension, episodes on hot asphalt, waiting in the dazzling absence of apology. I need this kid to stay mighty and coltish, thundering alongside other black kids, their wrestle and whoop, the brightness of it—I need for the world to bear it. And until it will, may the trees kneel closer, while we sit in mineral hush, together. May the boy whose dark eyes are an echo of my father's dark eyes, and his father's dark eyes, reach with cupped hands into the braided current. The boy, restless and lanky, the boy for whom each moment endlessly opens, for the attention he invests in the beetle's lacquered armor, each furrowed seed or heartbeat, the boy who once told me the world gives you second chances, the boy tugging my arm, saying look, saying now.            Copyright © 2019 by Nicole Terez Dutton. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 25, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets. About this Poem   "This poem, which borrows its title from a line the Gwendolyn Brooks poem 'Paul Robeson,' began as a remembrance of my father who was an enormously joyful person with a keen eye and a mischievous sense of humor. As a doctor my father spent his days helping people through their trauma, and many evenings relaxing with his dogs in the woods outside our house, listening. Sometimes I sat with him and listened while he pointed out deer or the sound of bullfrogs; it was his way to be curious, alert to the world, receptive. Like my father, my son is watcher, attentive to things large and small, a good listener, present. This poem carries the hope that I learned the things my father taught well, and that in spite of any and everything else, should he need it, something of my father's gentleness and strength, something of those slow, wooded evenings, will be here in these lines for my boy." —Nicole Terez Dutton   Nicole Terez Dutton is the author of If One Of Us Should Fall (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012). She is an editor at Transition Magazine and The Baffler, and teaches in the Solstice Low Residency MFA program. She lives in Somerville, Massachusetts. Poetry by Dutton   If One Of Us Should Fall (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012) "Summer" by Robin Coste Lewis "The Gift" by Li-Young Lee "Hummingbird Abecedarian" by Aimee Nezhukumatathil October Guest Editor: Oliver de la Paz   Thanks to Oliver de la Paz, author of five collections of poetry, including The Boy in the Labyrinth (University of Akron Press, 2019), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month's weekdays. Read a Q&A with Paz about his curatorial approach this month and find out more about our guest editors for the year. 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   Unsubscribe here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038

From Our Sponsors