WHO REMAINS STANDING?
by Andree Chedid
First,
erase your name,
unravel your years,
destroy your surroundings,
uproot what you seem,
and who remains standing?
Then,
rewrite your name,
restore your age,
rebuild your house,
pursue your path,
and then,
endlessly,
start over, all over again.
Andree is a Lebanese poetess, a woman well-versed in the art of beginning again. Given the sour aftertaste of an unintended power struggle in lapbooking with the girls today, I found myself closing the books, turning my back on the crafts, and waiting for the howl.
Standing in the room- with the girls and the toys and the half-capped glue sticks, the floor sticky with lemonade, the windows smudged with tiny fingerprints, a sketch I'd started only to find as part of someone's surprise collage- standing still in the center of the chaos, not a word came to my lips.
There was nothing to say.
Or, rather, nothing I said would have shaved the edge from the madness. Nothing would make the cut from the remainder of the well-laid plans any cleaner.
The Prophet wanted to take "portraits". I sat on the floor by the $30 thrift-store couch and gave in.
The images showed me to myself- an immobilized "modern" woman feeling her feminism more intensely with each passing minute- a still life surrounded by motion, by moving life.
When I reach out to steady myself, the poems are sturdier than any oak table.
It's not what we know, but what we long to know that keeps us hungry for life. The unquenchable longing is my best friend- the piece of myself I won't relinquish for any man, woman, or child.
On days like this today, I fold my hands. If I sit still long enough, steadied by poetry, the hubbub dims and narrows, chiseled by words folding one atop the other, thickening to the density of whetstone. I wait to be sharpened.
