The poem
the quality of being complete; unbroken condition; entirety ~ Webster A wild patience has taken me this far
as if I had to bring to shore a boat with a spasmodic outboard motor old sweaters, nets, spray-mottled books tossed in the prow some kind of sun burning my shoulder-blades. Splashing the oarlocks. Burning through. Your fore-arms can get scalded, licked with pain in a sun blotted like unspoken anger behind a casual mist.
The length of daylight this far north, in this forty-ninth year of my life is critical.
The light is critical: of me, of this long-dreamed, involuntary landing on the arm of an inland sea. The glitter of the shoal depleting into shadow I recognize: the stand of pines violet-black really, green in the old postcard but really I have nothing but myself to go by; nothing stands in the realm of pure necessity except what my hands can hold.
Nothing but myself?....My selves. After so long, this answer. As if I had always known I steer the boat in, simply. The motor dying on the pebbles cicadas taking up the hum dropped in the silence.
Anger and tenderness: my selves. And now I can believe they breathe in me as angels, not polarities. Anger and tenderness: the spider's genius to spin and weave in the same action from her own body, anywhere -- even from a broken web.
The cabin in the stand of pines is still for sale. I know this. Know the print of the last foot, the hand that slammed and locked the door, then stopped to wreathe the rain-smashed clematis back on the trellis for no one's sake except its own. I know the chart nailed to the wallboards the icy kettle squatting on the burner. The hands that hammered in those nails emptied that kettle one last time are these two hands and they have caught the baby leaping from between trembling legs and they have worked the vacuum aspirator and stroked the sweated temples and steered the boat there through this hot misblotted sunlight, critical light imperceptibly scalding the skin these hands will also salve.
This poem shows the true meaning of integrity and i love it! I would have never though of this!!!!
A powerful way of introspection. At 49, the poetess shares her evaluation of her life - the turning point she has come to, what life has offered her and she to it in return. Brutally honest to acknowledge the light (that that is necessary for one's very survival and that which is dispassionate - without exception).