Welcome back, peeps. We're diving into another poem from Ada Limón's Bright Dead Things poetry collection.
How Far Away We Are
By Ada Limón
So we might understand each other better:
I'm leaning on the cracked white window ledge
in my nice pink slippers lined with fake pink fur.
The air conditioning is sensational. Outside,
we've put up a cheap picnic table beneath the maple
but the sun's too hot to sit in, so the table glows
on alone like bleached-out bones in the heat.
Yesterday, so many dead in Norway. Today,
a big-voiced singer found dead in her London flat.
And this country's gone standstill and criminal.
I want to give you something, or I want to take
something from you. But I want to feel the exchange,
the warm hand on the shoulder, the song coming out
and the ear holding on to it. Maybe we could meet
at that table under the tree, just right out there.
I'm passing the idea to you in this note:
the table, the tree, the pure heat of late July.
We could be in that same place watching
the sugar maple throw down its winged seeds
like the tree wants to give us something too––
some sweet goodness that's so hard to take.
Thoughts going through my mind:
"I want to give you something, or I want to take something from you." = Reminded me of the COVID-19 quarantine period when everyone was isolated, and there was a longing for basic human interaction (many parts of the poem indicate a sense of loneliness)
"But I want to feel the exchange" = going back to a longing for physical/basic human interactions (after months of virtual learning and interactions, you realize the tighter/stronger bonds you create with people in person)
"Yesterday, so many dead in Norway. / Today, a big-voiced singer found dead in her London flat." = familiar events that often take over the headlines
Again, who is the "you" referring to in the poem? A longing to be with someone?
Frequent use of caesura = the punctuation within the line provides an opportunity for the readers to pause and reflect on each of the statements (quite the opposite to Limón's "Mowing"––a single-verse paragraph of text that maintains tempo and pace)
I'll leave it here for now. As always, if you would like to share anything, feel free to send me a private memo or drop any comments below. I'll see you tomorrow.
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