Miracles slip past us, Anne Carson

 

Lines

While talking to my mother I neaten things. Spines of books by the phone.

Paperclips

in a china dish. Fragments of eraser that dot the desk. She speaks

longingly

of death. I begin tilting all the paperclips in the other direction.

Out

the window snow is falling straight down in lines. To my mother,

love

of my life, I describe what I had for brunch. The lines are falling

faster

now. Fate has put little weights on the ends (to speed us up) I

want

to tell her--sign of God's pity. She won't keep me

she says, she

won't run up my bill. Miracles slip past us. The

paperclips

are immortally aligned. God's pity! How long

will

it feel like burning, said the child trying to be

kind.

 

-Anne Carson

 

This is from Carson's book of 2005, Decreation, in a section titled 'Stops', which includes several poems about her aging mother. The poem first appeared in The New Yorker.

 

I've been on a bit of an Anne Carson bender lately, mostly rereading, but not entirely.