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We may lie to others about who we are. We may lie to ourselves about who we are. The poet is at once an individual life and the life or lives within a poem.We think of 'authorship' as a special role one takes on. Abigail Calkin tells the truth: each of us, during one lifetime, lives many lives. return to contents, this issue

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ABIGAIL B. CALKIN
Para Te

I am a sheet of white paper.
I am your life, your wife.

You are the black ink of a pen
That spilled a macula on my paper.

I shall not be at your grave:
I'll shed my tears on linen sheets.

I am snow remembering
When we trod the silent midnights

Footsteps that met, separated, intertwined.
We left our marks on each other's path.
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02:11:123

Abigail Calkin (see above) invites us to share SUSAN FARMER. 'Divorced' - oh no, not another woman who's decided to go it alone! Oh, most definitely not! FARMER's extended metaphor is apt; the language, immediate. The personal transformed into the universal (who doesn't know wood!) is 'social narrative' at its best.

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SUSAN FARMER
Divorced


We began
side by side.
Drew ourselves straight
feeling sapling new.

He loved me adored me,
"but pull in a little there
smooth out a bit here.
Train that branch 
in the right direction."

One day I woke up.
Told him he too had a gnarl here
a knothole there.
He cut me down
never imagining
glorious mahogany shone
deep inside.

Now, 
well past days
his splinters light
fired wood warm
I weather the years
as heirloom.

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Floresta Estadual do Antimary Manejo Florestal de uso múltiplo, opens new window