Crossing over Aug. 5, 2012

  

It’s hard to figure out what the inspiration for the poem she posted today. Perhaps it was a recognition of how her family claim together in her time of need. Other than that, the poem seems to have risen above the conflicts of the last few months to look back at her heritage.

Roughly translated as “Crossing Over,” the title symbolizes a number of aspects of character, of moving on while holding onto important elements of the past.

The poet looks out over the landscape at sunrise and the New York City skyline visible from her building, and it is for her a time of reflection and peace, something private, something she finds only at this moment during the day when ordinary life stirs around her, the bakeries putting on their product on the shelves, old women hanging their laundry onto window sills (an image of almost every immigrant community in every urban area dating back to after the American Civil War).

She envisions herself going back into time, walking those cobblestone streets, looking around at the women as they lean out their windows, each an image of her own ancestry.

There is comfort in the fact that she is part of this community, too, generations past walking beside her.

And though she has to return to her own reality – which saddens her, she says, she understands that this community is always with her, and she can return to it each time at sunrise and know they will be there waiting.

This idea of belonging to a culture and to be part of a community that stretches out through time is central to the title – not just a crossing over from her time to their time, but also a crossing over from another place, part of the immigrant experience that has seen people like these making the arduous trek from the old world to the new, yet carrying with them old world traditions which the poem revisits when she wants at each dawn.

She is not alone, as she points out, she carries this with her much in the same way those ancestors carried their culture here from where they started.

This is an amazingly peaceful poem, tender, coming at a time when the poet is coming down off an extremely emotional roller coaster, and is seeking the comfort of her community and finds it.

 

2012 menu


email to Al Sullivan

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The accidental thief

Image
    Written late February 2013   Her third poem in so many days picked up on the theme of her budding romance with a married man, yet far less blatantly portrayed as in the previous two poems. Yet, this poem is no less powerful for the intensity of its emotions it is attempting to convey. In this poem, she paints herself as “an accidental thief,” claiming to collect the small things other people are unaware they are relinquishing to her, “glimpses of smiles” the “gestures of kindness,” the “pieces of dreams and devastation and concealed consuming passions.” All this harkens back to the previous poems to a man who unconsciously seemed to transmit his affections for her. Only in this poem, such is a statement of fact rather than mere conjecture. Things are “inadvertently expressed through eyes,” in moments when the person thinks they are unreadable. How much of this is wishful thinking on her part is hard to say. But it is clear that she is building a case as ...
Read more

Waking up to Obama Wednesday, January 04, 2012

Image
              I went to sleep and woke up this morning to the Iowa Caucuses, a relentless reminder of not how much choice we actually have in the upcoming election, but how little a field of choice we have.             On one side, we have President Obama – whose biggest contribution to America over the last four years has been to kill Bin Laden, and bring down the government of Libya , and cause even more turmoil over seas, while allowing secret government operatives even more control over the private lives of American citizens.             Instead of socialized medicine, he’s given us a new tax.             Instead of tax cuts for the middle class, he’s imposed new fees on potential home owners.          ...
Read more

The parking man can March 16, 2012

Image
  Sunlight gleams off the bright glass this cool Hudson County morning. It feels like fall, but it is not fall. It is the end of winter and the leaves have already turned and fallen and are preparing their triumphant return. Some old leaves have found their way down onto street where they are whisked up by the persistent brushes of the street sweeper. Each morning, it is the same ritual of waiting for the parking man and his ticket book to arrive and pass, the sound of the brushes brushing against this asphalt world, morning music we all come to live through, as the parking man’s van beeps out its warning for us to move or pay the price, while we switch sides as he passes, and thus wisely, learn to escape his wrath.       2012 menu email to Al Sullivan
Read more