I’m kind of obsessing on Adrienne Rich these days. She was important to me once when I was much younger. I read her as a spokesperson for the moment. She somehow seemed to have the words to help me think about what I was reckoning with when I was wordless. Now I find myself drawn to her again, in another moment when I am wordless, albeit for very different reasons.

Here’s the poem fragment that caught my heart today

Like this Together

Adrienne Rich

Wind rocks the car.

We sit parked by the river,

Silence between our teeth.

Birds scatter across the island

Of broken ice. Another time

I’d have said: “Canada geese,”

Knowing you love them.

A year, ten years from now

I’ll remember this—

This sitting like drugged birds

In a glass case—

Not why, only that we

Were here like this together.

From Necessities of Life. 1966.