more poems

So - the crunch is on.  I've got school reading out the ying-yang, and seminars to prepare and papers to get on.  I've got a committee to get together and a dissertation prep proposal to plan out.  And so what do I find myself doing?  Reading poetry. Like, lots of it.  I cannot get enough of it.  

This is the final (of 21 plus a lovely floating poem) of Adrienne RIch's Twenty-One Love Poems.  I love it so much, I'm considering incorporating part of it into a tattoo.  Yep.  Love it that much.  And since I have a kidlet with night terrors and haven't really slept in days, I'm too tired to come up with anything even close to clever or relevant to say.  So ya get Adrienne.  I know I should have posted the whole thing.  But it's longggggg.  You should still read it all, though.  But for now, enjoy this bit.  Or don't.  



XXI
The dark lintels, the blue and foreign stones
of the great round rippled by stone implements
the midsummer night light rising from beneath
the horizon - where I said "a cleft of light"
I meant this. And this is not Stonehenge
simply nor any place but the mind
casting back to where her solitude,
Shared, could be chosen without loneliness,
not easily nor without pains to stake out
the circle, the heavy shadows, the great light.
I choose to be the figure in that light,
half - blotted by darkness, something moving
across that space, the color of stone
greeting the moon, yet more than stone:
a woman. I choose to walk here. And to draw this circle.

- Adrienne Rich (from Twenty-One Love Poems)