Napowrimo 2: Dear Sarah

 Admiring “Welcome to the Situation” by Kathleen Heil

This poem is filled with religious symbolism and spiritual reflection. I like the poem, and I like that about it. I did a little searching on the poet Kathleen Heil, and her work is really amazing—a lot of it deals with being a Catholic, New Orleans, and gender. The heavy weight of belief and faith in a place like this.

 

This poem is addressed to John. I wonder if it’s the Biblical John.

 

“It isn’t all misery and rot” the speaker declares, beginning the poem with somewhat of an upbeat tone, though I wonder how sincere it is. I’m not sure what “Sometimes it is enough just to let / your body drop” means …

 

Then the speaker is at Catholic guesthouse, and “all the mean working the front desk” are named Michael, which reminds me of the Arch Angel Michael.

 

The speaker claims she abandoned her home, but she’s returning to it, and I assume this place is New Orleans.

 

Interesting line: “And then / we’re both still alive” so the speaker is walking with St. John along the “gaudy Mississippi”

 

This is a neat image: “The water / has unfrozen to throw us a party before it throws / down the levees reminders we can’t always / control everything hence the drink in the glass”

 

We can’t always control everything. An important lesson to learn. The floods of New Orleans teach us that, the weather does, and maybe the body too. Oooph.

 

The poem ends with Gabriel trumping out a tune “laden there your lithe wish persist, persist”

 

The poem is a little all over the place, but the Biblical references tie it together. I think the poem is about accepting life’s chaos, that we’re all victims or refugees of fate. The only option we have is to persist. Looking back at the beginning line, “it isn’t all misery and rot” does seem sincere. It isn’t. Even in New Orleans.

 

I was thinking of John as being the apostle of Jesus, but upon further digging, John is also the name of the author of Revelations. So now the poem, in that context, makes WAY MORE SENSE.

 

The speaker is describing the end of times, but they’re not “all misery and rot”

 

More interesting now. 

 

I like the idea that there are some things you just can’t control, like the flood, like the river, like snowmelt, like sadness, like the body.

 

I think that’s the idea I’m going to run with today.

 

 

Dear Sarah

Dear Sarah, if only I too could laugh

In the face of this, another cold morning,

Frost encrusting prairie grass, snuffing out

Hope like those first shades of green

After so many months of nothing.

 

Sarah, I’m so tired of wintercrearig,

The color of joy perpetually sapped

From this season that should be spring.

 

Sarah, how many times did your flesh

Flutter with hope? How many months

Were you disappointed when nothing grew

In the flowerbed of your body,

Even as the ice in the rivers within you

Melted to slush, and you saw it, a cardinal

 

Set against the white snow. Sarah, this afternoon,

After another visit to the OBGYN,

We went to the park to walk, to feel spring

Finally coaxing the grass to grow green again,

 

To try again. Sarah, you can’t stop hope

From welling in your heart, can you?

 

Sarah, God never stops the rosebuds

From filling this forest with red.