Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, NO SINGLE THING BY ITSELF, by CLARENCE MAJOR


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

NO SINGLE THING BY ITSELF, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: She carried a heavy load, but


She carried a heavy load, but
her life was not a story.
It had no center.

Everything in it mattered.
Things alone and things together.
Her own smell.
In time, the right husband
at the right time.
A wedding ring
on the left-hand finger.
Her dead father's memory
swimming like goldfish
in her milky sleep.
Everything counted.
The red truck across the street.
Her unworn red dress.
Sad, lonely people
with acerbic wit.
Mean and nice servants.
First sentences.
Plotless dinner parties.
The great space called Life.
September in Spain.
Secrets -- "I would die
if anyone reads these words."
Windows looking out
from dark rooms.
Taste, smell, touch, thought.
She counted everything.
She counted on things
being in their places.
Believed in everything --
the journey of sperm cells
swimming for survival
inside other women.
Fit, she accepted herself.
Survival of the fittest.
Believed in her dreams.
Though there was no
center to anything,
everything counted.
The cost of underwear.
The sound of trees.
The color of underwear.
What she wore.
Her student fees.
The right nursing home
for her dying mother.
Her mother's smell.
Her mother's swollen ankles.
Everything. All of it.
The hungry in India.
The told and the untold.
Untold millions dying.
The dying in Africa.
The dying in America,
dying without design.
Without line, or reason,
it all added up, counted,
meant something somehow.
Yet, in detail after detail,
while she carried
the weight of her life,
the pieces refused
to fit together.


Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA
98368-0271, www.cc.press.org




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