Poem for the Poet
A poem for Cathy
April 27, 2013
Janet T. Atkins
I am infected by literature
It rolls through my mind like a nor’easter
I open the oven door and there is Sylvia
weeping for her beautiful self drowned in a mirror
and when I am in the woods, I come across a babbling
stream, but all I hear is Virginia’s voice
whose feminism gave her
the whole world for her country
and May Swenson whose religion
was poetry—
otherwise, “it seemed like a redundancy.”
But, by far, it is Rilke who teaches me that
“the only journey is the one within,”
and without literature, I would have no map,
no compass
with which to set my pace.
Then let it come, this muse, these questions,
and bathe me in the life of words.
For without stories—without the Word—there is
no life.
