The Writer

There's this poem called The Writer by Richard Wilbur, and today I kept thinking about it. 'Cause I get so confused about my life, and I feel like I am throwing myself against walls trying to get out to where I can just fly without any fear or confusion or doubt. That sounds so dumb.

I guess I just feel like I should be doing all these great things and I don't know what it is or how to get there. It's so unbelievably frustrating, and I can't really explain it, but today I just thought about that sparrow and how it tried and tried and tried, beating against walls until, humped and bloody, it cleared the sill of the world.

It's aways a matter of life and death. The sparrow kept getting up and flinging itself just as hard, every time, even if it meant that it hurt. But it was worth it, because when it finally got out, it was flying as hard as it could.

I think a lot about how I always want to escape things... I mean, I wanted to leave Washington and go to North Carolina, to a place where the sun shines. I ran away from ICS. I desperately wanted to leave Juanita. And here I am at BYU and I feel suffocated and itchy and I'm constantly going to this park up in this one neighborhood and swinging on the swings and pretending that on the next swing I will be able to get away from here. Isn't that stupid?

I think part of it is classrooms; feeling controlled and judged... and clouds too. Some days I wonder if I am just this pathetic person who is always going to be running away from something.

But then today I thought of that bird, and how it kept trying and trying and trying until it finally flew out the window. And I'm not saying I'm going to leave BYU or anything like that. But I guess... that I should not be ashamed my choices. And that I shouldn't resign myself, but keep trying to find that window.

The Writer

In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.

I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash

And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark

And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk-top,

And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,

It lifted off from a chair-back, 
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.

It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten.  I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBatuRGZAmA