Heritage by Vassar Miller
I love the image of loneliness an as undomesticated animal in this poem.
Heritage
By Vassar Miller
I wake up early,
the day spread out before me, blank, like a sheet of paper,
and I have nothing to write
but your name.
I wake up early,
the humid air around me is a listening ear,
and I have nothing to say
but your name.
I speak it aloud,
but your name loosed from my lips is dry like a sparrow’s cheep,
having little to do
with either of us.
Let me recall
how many have waked up early and found loneliness waiting
like a small beast from the woods
made a pet,
which, when it grew up,
for all that they had coaxed it with words or with work,
would turn wild again
and tear them
though it had worn
the shape of their loves. And though they might kill it, they wore
its pelt like a mantle
fallen upon them
from a vanishing form
after which they cried, as I cry, “My father, my father!”
But the figure had gone.
They are gone, too,
the lost and the lonely,
with Death, the dark nurse, who has dropped all their griefs in her pocket.
She comes so swiftly, even though
we wake up early.
