A Gift

0
741

By Kathryn Starbuck

Who is that creature   

and who does he want?   

Me, I trust. I do not   

attempt to call out his   

name for fear he will   

tread on me. What do   

you believe, he asks.   

That we all want to be   

alone, I reply, except when   

we do not; that the world   

was open to my sorrow   

and ate most of it; that   

today is a gift and I am   

ready to receive you.

***

Journalist, essayist, and newspaper editor, Kathryn Starbuck started writing poems in her 60s. She is the author of Griefmania (Sheep Meadow Press, 2006) and Sex Perhaps (Sheep Meadow Press, 2014). Her poems have appeared in the New YorkerPoetrySewanee Review, and Best American Poetry 2008.

Source: Poetry (March 2009)