Thanks to Mary Lee at A Year of Reading for hosting Poetry Friday this week
* * * * *
In
the wake of this week’s heartbreaking events in Charleston, I have been
thinking about “One River, One Boat,” a poem written by SC Poet Laureate Marjory
Wentworth. In January, Ms. Wentworth was supposed to read her poem at SC
Governor Nikki Haley’s inauguration, but was omitted from the program due to
“time constraints.” (You can read more about this here.) Since January, the
exposure her poem has garnered has been enormous, and the praise is well
deserved.
Yesterday,
as I was reading online about the beautiful men and women who lost their lives
on Wednesday night, one of my boys came up behind me. “Why are you reading
about this if it makes you so upset?” he asked. “Because we can’t just ignore
all of the bad stuff that happens and pretend it doesn’t exist,” I responded.
I
have thought about his question ever since. My children are growing up in SC in
a wonderful Norman Rockwell-esque neighborhood that I refer to in my head as a
“bubble.” But down the road, in a city where we have family and visit frequently,
yet another crime has been committed that is whipping the already agitated
social consciousness of this country into a frenzy. I want to protect my boys
from this type of thing, but at the same time I know that it is important to
share and discuss it with them. They are 12, on the cusp of their teen years, with
high standards of justice and a huge capacity to feel everything—love, empathy,
outrage, sorrow, the list goes on and on. It is my job as a parent to channel
this enormous ability to feel into an attitude of loving acceptance and a desire to BE the change this country needs as they grow and mature. So
today our conversation will continue.
Please
take a moment and read Ms. Wentworth’s poem, which I decided was well worth a second blog post this week. The specific references to
Charleston’s history are especially poignant today, as we are
“...huddled
together on this boat
handed
down to us–stuckat the last bend of a wide river
splintering near the sea.”
One River, One Boat
by Marjory Wentworth
I know there’s something better down the road.
~ Elizabeth Alexander
Because our history is a knot
we try to unravel, while others
try to tighten it, we tire easily
and fray the cords that bind us.
The cord is a slow moving river,
spiraling across the land
in a succession of S’s,
splintering near the sea.
To read the rest, click here.
