Friday poetry challenge: a shove out the door

Second-to-last Friday of the semester and my students stand ready to dash off into summer, to jobs and internships and adult responsibility, or perhaps to sleeping late, doomscrolling, and soaking in the summer sun. They stand at the threshold of something new, in a liminal space much like that described in the Anne Sexton poem we discussed on Wednesday, "Little Girl, My Stringbean, My Lovely Woman," in which a mother addresses a daughter who stands in the passage between childhood and adolescence. 

Earlier in the semester we'd read the first chapter of Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior, in which a mother uses the occasion of her daughter's first period to tell her a terrifying story about a village that rises up violently against a woman who bears a child out of wedlock. It's a "story to grow up on," warning the daughter that if she steps outside of bounds, the village will watch and take revenge.

Anne Sexton's poem provides a more gentle message from mother to daughter. The mother recalls her own transition to puberty, when she heard "as in a dream / the conversation of the old wives / speaking of womanhood," but she adds, "I remember that I heard nothing myself. / I was alone. / I waited like a target." She wants her daughter, on the other hand, to be wrapped in love and surrounded by supporting words. "Your bones are lovely," she says, adding, "there is nothing in your body that lies. / All that is new is telling the truth." The final stanza urges the daughter to seize the burning power of newness with a confidence set in stone.

Just before that final rousing word, though, the poet describes herself, as if in afterthought, as "an old tree in the background." When newness springs forth like a vine in a bean patch, it's easy to ignore the old tree in the background, but that's where I stand right now. My students are working hard to finish well and in a few weeks they'll scamper off to experience newness, and at that point my only job is to stand in the background stolid as an old tree and trust that we've equipped them for whatever lies ahead. 

With just a few more class sessions to prepare them for the journey, what words of wisdom might a tired old tree impart? Let's keep it brief with a little haiku:

Roots burrow deep while
limbs seek the sun: a bare tree
bursts with fresh spring leaves.

Now it's your turn: share some words of wisdom with the young folk who stand in the doorway, and give them a little push as they pass through.