As I join Poetry Friday (hosted this week by Diane Mayr from Random Noodling), I’ll be sharing another poem from Gemino H. Abad’s Father and Daughter Collection. I’ve read this poem and knew how much truth it holds in terms of human experience. I love the nights. In the evenings I feel the solitude that the day does not grant me.
Day and Night, from Father and Daughter, 1996
During the day I am divided and eaten. There are pieces of me which are snatched by common needs, devoured by strange hungers. I am dispersed, and myself I do not know. I become the world’s property, of those whose words hurt and those whose silence borrows speech from me. My own path may have other aims, but they wander into other people’s dreams, and sometimes, they cross frontiers where skies heave like mountains being born. Given everywhere and taking all, I am purely spent – both gifts and their bright wrappings set aside and forgotten. Then at night my dream gathers my pieces like minnows in a stream, and I am returned to myself where my words sleep and cannot shape thoughts to unravel me.
Gathering Books 
Myra, what a beautiful poem. I love these lines:
my dream gathers
my pieces like minnows in a stream
Abad uses such fresh images to describe what we so often label “burnout” because we are too “purely spent” to conjure more specific words. I’m sending this poem to one of my very overworked daughters! Thank you.
LikeLike
Hi Joyce,
I do hope your daughter enjoys the poem.
There’s a softness in the way those lines flow.
Thanks for the visit.
-iphigene
LikeLike
I am so grateful to you for sharing this poet’s work. I’ve just put this book on my wish list, a must have. The poems are breathtaking in their truth making. That first line is my day at times: “During the day I am divided and eaten.” Thank you.
LikeLike
Hi Linda
I do hope you get a hold of a his book. We are indeed at most times divided and eaten by the things we do during the day, but the night, the night we can claim for dreams and rest.
LikeLike
During the day I am divided
and eaten.
Wow, what a dynamic beginning! It certainly grabs the reader. Thanks for sharing it.
LikeLike
Thank you, Myra, for sharing another wonderful work from this amazing poet. What woman has not felt, “I am dispersed…”? This poem expresses all those related feelings so sharply, so sharply observed from another a few steps out of that daily fray.
LikeLike
Iphigene, this is why I have always loved night/sleep! Beautiful poetry.
LikeLike
This is exactly the way I feel after a long day at school. Sleep truly repairs my fragmented me!
LikeLike
It’s so generous of Mr. Abad to share all of these wonderful poems with us! I brought “Care of Light” to my poetry group this week, and they loved it. I think it got one of my fellow poets all choked up.
LikeLike
Oh my goodness, Myra, can I relate to this poem! And yes I would not trade the being eaten for anything. I do enjoy a good nap once in a while though. 🙂 Thanks so much for sharing.
LikeLike
Pingback: Highlights of November and Carnival of Children’s Literature |