me and my brother Todd, Mom

I've been sorting through things with my mom, revisiting old poems of hers, reading the ones she's working on now. Every once in a while I'll grab one of the books in her collection down, and open randomly. Yesterday, I couldn't stop reading, and re-reading this one.

It's from a book called, The Will to Change.  The poem is:

"November 1968"

 Stripped

you're beginning to float free

up through the smoke of brushfires

and incinerators

the unleafed branches won't hold you

nor the radar aerials

You're what the autumn knew would happen

after the last collapse

of primary color

once the last absolutes were torn to pieces

you could begin

How you broke open, what sheathed you

until this moment

I know nothing about it

my ignorance of you amazes me

now that I watch you

starting to give yourself away

to the wind

1968    Adrienne Rich