July 2022
Bio Note: I'm a poet, political activist and arts educator, and the founding director of two poets-in-the-schools organizations. Many of my poems reflect urgent political concerns, but those are deeply intertwined with everything else I write and care about. I believe that complex reality can be seen in both of my previous poetry collections, Reports and Losing the Moon, and in my recently completed manuscript, Whatever Is Left, which includes this poem. I think it has something to say about what it means to be free.
The Beginning
I will live in the basement. I will
dance without clothes, never again
needing the others. I will
climb to the roof when only
the moon is watching
and roll on the shingles, hurting my body
back to more life. I won’t
eat anymore. Or I’ll gorge on wine
and the smell of the lilacs
that withered last year—and somehow
never came back to life. They say that winter
was simply too harsh. I will learn
to live on simply, discarding the questions.
And when I can’t? I’ll still
try not to answer. I’ll become
like a ghost who can’t stop
wandering and wandering—who has
stories to tell, beyond all these phrases.
I will title this month The
Beginning of Silence, though I’ve never known
one moment of silence. I will rise like a wave
into that heaven, and try not to curse
as I do what I must, what I
always have done—I will chant
and I’ll chant of
the crash.
©2022 Kathryn Levy
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to say what it is about the poem you like. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -JL