The Carrying
The sky’s white with November’s teeth,
and the air is ash and woodsmoke.
A flush of color from the dying tree,
a cargo train speeding through, and there,
that’s me, standing in the wintering
grass watching the dog suffer the cold
leaves. I’m not large from this distance,
just a fence post, a hedge of holly.
Wider still, beyond the rumble of overpass,
mares look for what’s left of green
in the pasture, a few weanlings kick
out, and theirs is the same sky, white
like a calm flag of surrender pulled taut.
A few farms over, there’s our mare,
her belly barrel-round with foal, or idea
of foal. It’s Kentucky, late fall, and any
mare worth her salt is carrying the next
potential stake’s winner. Ours, her coat
thicker with the season’s muck, leans against
the black fence and this image is heavy
within me. How my own body, empty,
clean of secrets, knows how to carry her,
knows we were all meant for something.
Notes
To start this month off, where we explore the faces we wear and the lives we conceal beneath them, we turn to Ada Limón’s *The Carrying*. The poem moves through the longing for a child, the uncertainty of the body, and the quiet weight of a future that may never arrive. There are parts of ourselves that remain invisible to others, yet shape how we experience the world. Even an absence can become something we carry, quietly altering our sense of who we are. As November unfolds through The Mask, Limón reminds us that every familiar face holds a private life beyond what others can recognize. We move through the world performing ordinary roles, while carrying desires, disappointments, and imagined futures that rarely find their way to the surface. #AdaLimon #AmericanPoetry #ContemporaryPoetry #IdentityAndSelf #TheCarrying
Copyright © 2017 Ada Limón.