Although the previous owner is long since deceased,
her mail is somehow finding its way through
to our loft on Water Street. The Wilderness Society.
Planned Parenthood. The Met. The ACLU.
The institutions for which she graciously earmarked
some modest funds. Amid the calls to renew
her gifts to Doctors without Borders, the Democrats,
are final notices, themselves now overdue,
from Save the Redwoods, American Indian,
The Chronicle of the Horse. Wherein that exquisite
strand of spider-silk proves no less keratin
than a hoof, salicin is indeed an anodyne,
while the Indigenous people who live along the coast
remain its ancestral stewards and guardians.
How did this poem begin for you?
Strictly speaking, this is a found poem. Perhaps even a foundling poem, in the sense it left successive versions of itself on my doorstep. Two years after we moved to our present address in lower Manhattan, we’re still getting items of mail intended for the previous owner. Together they give a clear sense of her personality, her political persuasion, her preferences in leisure pursuits. It’s not only because of our shared interest in Native Americans and horse riding that I’m certain she’s a person I would have loved to have known.
What surprised me most about this poem was the feeling that it has always wanted to find its way into the world in this form. It’s a sonnet, of course, a poem of a certain duration and density that’s perfectly suited to getting a lot done in a shortish time and space. I had a great deal of fun varying the resoundingly predictable chimes on “through,” “ACLU,” “renew,” and “overdue” with what we might call the “dyslectic” rhymes of “deceased” and “society,” “earmarked” and “Democrats.”
One discovery that did impress itself upon me was that the use of “salicin” derived from the bark of the willow (or “salley,” as we call it in Ireland) has been a feature of numerous cultures from the Greek through the Chinese to the Cree and the Creek. According to one source, “white willow appears to bring pain relief more slowly than aspirin, but its effects may last longer.”