Elizabeth Cade
The Writer
In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed
with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.
I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.
Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.
But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which
The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.
I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash
And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark
And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk-top,
And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,
It lifted off from a chair-back,
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.
It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.
-Richard Wilber
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Creative Commons Sampling Plus 1.0 License.
- sussex woodland meadow birds by "veneer from http://freesounds.org +)
- church bell in the distance by Adeodatus +)
- Fire In Fireplace by angelopirellas FreeSound +)
- Piano practice by https://freesound.org/people/errinerung/ +)
- Book Pages Turning by jetstar from http://youtube.com +)
- Wooden Floor Boots by Lex777 from http://freesound.org +)
- Writing with a felt tip pen by MoKoLoKo from http://freesound.org +)
- Pouring tea into a cup by MrAustralisation from http://www.freesound.org/ +)