Maureen Seaton
Patience of the Light
after Zagajewski
I need to write from one end of the page to the other, a wide spread like the ocean between Miami and Africa. I wonder if I am a good person. Sometimes the tree outside my window is alive and busy with poems. Sometimes it simply stands in awe of the light that pours down from the Rockies and bathes it in sundown. My daughter will watch her father die today. He will leave her and his other daughters and move into a light he creates as he’s leaving. Don’t be misled. I no longer love him. There is so much he needs to discover before it is safe for me. But the light is patient and the tree is a patient tree. I watch how it neither cringes nor bends in laughter when the bluejays get bossy or the squirrels run around as if they own every branch. I wonder if I can learn alive what I will surely learn after death. I think not. But for now, there’s a tree. For now, there’s a tree and a window through which to love it.
Also by Maureen Seaton (with Denise Duhamel): "Death Is Not a Riddle," "Yes, And," "13 Lines about Walls"
Maureen Seaton has authored twenty-one poetry collections, both solo and collaborative—most recently, Sweet World (CavanKerry Press, 2019), which also won the Florida Book Award. Other honors for poetry include the Iowa Prize, Lambda Literary Award, Audre Lorde Award, an NEA fellowship, and the Pushcart. Her memoir, Sex Talks to Girls (University of Wisconsin Press 2008, 2018), also garnered a “Lammy.” Seaton is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Miami.