I’ve posted poems by Lynn Emanuel twice before, but I can’t resist posting this one, which feels so appropriate at this moment when everything is so provisional. I was lucky to meet Lynn and her husband when Lynn came to read at Marin Poetry Center two years ago. Larry did a wonderful broadside of her poem, “Blond Bombshell.” Lynn was generous enough to blurb my new book, which also endears me to her. And on top of all that, I love this poem:
My Life
Like Jonas by the fish was I received by it,
swung and swept in its dark waters,
driven to the deeps by it and beyond many rocks.
Without any touching of its teeth I tumbled into it
and without more struggle than a mote of dust
entering the door of a cathedral, so muckle were its jaws.
How heel over head was I hurled down
the broad road of its throat, stopped inside
its chest wide as a hall, and like Jonas I stood up
asking where the beast was and finding it nowhere,
there in grease and sorrow I built my bower.
Lynn Emanuel
The Nerve of It: Poems New and Selected
Wow! A lot to chew on!
“entering the door of a cathedral, so muckle were its jaws”
“asking where the beast was and finding it nowhere,
there in grease and sorrow I built my bower. “
You made me laugh–but muckle–what a great word!