Breath

On first hearing Miriam Levine present this new poem at a reading, I knew instantly I wanted to spend more time with the piece, needed to think seriously about the precarious moment being described and all its implications.  Such a response not only signals for me the potency of a poem, it spurs my editorial desire to share it with Red Letter readers—and I’m delighted to do so today.

Miriam is the author of six volumes of poetry, including the just-released Forget about Sleep, winner of the Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Award from ‎ NYQ Books.  She’s also written a novel and a memoir and, a decade back, was chosen as Arlington, Massachusetts’ first Poet Laureate, inaugurating what’s become a proud tradition.  Even on a first reading of “Breath,” it’s clear how besotted the poet is with her grandson—as I am with mine, I’ll quickly add—which partially explains the intensity of my response to the poem.  There is such a physical intimacy with young children who have yet to experience strict boundaries between themselves and the world.  Our grandson casually pulls on my nose, tugs at my hair, or burrows into my lap, as if my body was merely an extension of his own.  Here, Miriam heaps sensual detail upon detail (“mouth so inky blue” from berry picking; “caramel brown eyes”), it brought to mind that ecstatic exclamation I could just eat you up!  But I’ve learned that this experience—falling headlong into love at a child’s birth—is as astonishing as it is commonplace.  Scientists, of course, will point to the biologic imperative contained in parent- and grandparenthood, coupled with the giddy cascade of oxytocin and other hormones—but that explanation only goes so far.  Perhaps it requires a poet in order to register the broader significance, especially when it’s your child’s child looking up at you from the crook of your arm.  Like the turning of a single page, light as a breath, a new awareness is taking hold: this is the momentousness of a new chapter, and you are being swept along by its momentum.

Over time, as that infant begins to develop into its own unique self—your relationship growing ever more complex and, frankly, heart-wrenching—there comes a moment when you grasp, with startling clarity, how life seems irrevocably changed.  A future is announcing itself, and it surpasses even your ability to imagine—a thought that’s both frightening and surprisingly sweet.  The ‘genetic narrative’ (so to speak) at the center of your existence has now been braided to a wholly separate set of possibilities.  You feel, in every fiber of your being, that this young life has the power to signify, not just familial continuance, but humanity’s.  Every family wants to believe theirs is part of a never-ending story (though even a quick perusal of the headlines reminds us this is far from assured.)  And so I experienced something of a neural jolt when the poet described the child as being “innocent of sperm.”  Indeed, that potency, when it arrives, serves as an arrow toward a new world, one that will go on without us.  We must accept that even our own loving embrace will eventually give way to some other.  What, then, about the storehouse of personal memory we’ve carried all our lives—which contains, in part, our parents’ history, and their parents’?  Most of us feel an imperative to communicate to these new arrivals some portion of this old narrative—its genetic, emotional, cultural, spiritual dimensions.  But, to a surprising degree, even this will gradually disperse in order to make way for new loves, other exploration and creation.  Though it seems of paramount importance to us as individuals, in truth it’s only a fine thread we cling to and, eventually, release.  Such a thought combines our greatest sorrow and overwhelming joy.  But we’re offered the chance to step back and watch the grandchild (or, for that matter, this poem) move boldly out into the world, making its own way.  We are—briefly but profoundly—blessed by both.