issue 13, 1993
These Many Tricks
Last night, too far from home,
I walked through town, breezes lifting
off the river, though the river
seemed perfectly still
from the bridge where I watched
the houselights glow on the water.
Then I could see the houses themselves,
the windows of the corner house
lit up and draped with lace,
and a balcony where flower boxes
rested like white envelopes.
The moon was almost full
so I could see a family of clouds,
and then a woman with something pink
on her head, perhaps a shower cap,
entered a kitchen and washed her hands
and stood a minute looking out.
I believe I saw all this in water
though I couldn’t see myself reflected anywhere.
And when I tossed my useless pennies
into the shine of all that had missed me,
I wanted to feel each hit
as if it were death, and I had fallen,
each ripple making houses quiver,
and clouds and moon and sky—
though I knew I was kidding myself.
To shake the world by dying
was a trick I’d have to miss,
and I knew it long before
I wanted to live again,
long before I watched
the river reassemble itself,
its stillness just an image of stillness,
its houses no more homes
than I had wished them to be,
though possibly homes—
and once I admitted these many tricks
I knew I could start last night
to wish my body home again,
and teach my eyes to open
like windows into the night
behind which a woman could stand
and think, unconcerned
that I might see her, or might not
see her at all.
————
Author’s Statement — I wrote this poem during a very difficult time in my life, when my then-partner, who had attempted suicide and received almost no treatment afterwards, and I were struggling amid multiple other stresses. I see this poem now as an effort to find language about what it meant to be a feminist woman in a family and to find a way out of despair. In the poem, the river reflects its surroundings, but moves even as it appears to stay in place.
Deirdre O’Connor is the author of two books of poems, most recently The Cupped Field, which received the Able Muse Book Award in 2018. She directs the Writing Center at Bucknell University, where she also serves as Associate Director of the Bucknell Seminar for Undergraduate Poets. More information is available on her website.