Poem: "Power" by Adrienne Rich

That ear pain I wrote about in my last post turned out to be a Eustachian Tube Dysfunction due to a sinus infection. Big words for 'everything in your head is all plugged up,' including my creative flow. I probably exacerbated the entire thing by staying out too late two nights in a row this weekend. (Not sorry.)

Tonight, instead of composing a new blog post,  I'm taking my decongestant, my heating pad, and my cat, and I'm going to sleep. At 9:18 pm. (Sorry, and Not sorry)

Instead I offer this poem, written by the great Adrienne Rich in 1974. The last line changed my life. Some day I'll tell you how.


Power, by Adrienne Rich

Living      in the earth-deposits     of our history

Today a backhoe divulged      out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle      amber      perfect      a hundred-year-old
cure for fever      or melancholy      a tonic
for living on this earth      in the winters of this climate

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered      from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years    by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin     of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold      a test-tube or a pencil

She died      a famous woman      denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds      came      from the same source as her power

1974