Poetry: Letter from Rope to Bridge


Matthew Olzmann has always been a poet as a storyteller. And in “Letter to a Bridge of String”, the story is that familiar tale of improbability: all the reasons we should hope for despite our eyes suggesting otherwise. Still, I love the opening – this time it’s not the shepherd who brings the good news, but the shepherd who marvels at the miracle in the air. It is almost fitting, then, that in this poem as in life, what is abducted is not the most important thing, but how we can fear what we notice. Some days you want to remember the fragility of a rope bridge, that even on bad days it never let anyone down. Chosen by Reginald Dwayne Betts

by Matthew Olzmann

to the herdsman
It should look like I’m going through the gate below
in the sky. I feel it too: very few among us

and Fall. But that’s how faith works.
As the wind throws one foot in front of the other
shakes the cage of living things and the rocks there

Cheer up every wobble, your threads keep going
this braided work is almost an intact promise: Do not worry.
I’ve been here for a long time. You will cross.


Reginald Dwayne Bets He is a poet and lawyer. He created Freedom Reads, an initiative to curate microlibraries and place them in jails across the country. His latest poetry collection “Felon” explores the post-incarceration experience. His 2018 article in The New York Times Magazine about his journey from teen car theft to working lawyer won a National Magazine Award. Matthew Olzmann is a poet whose last book is “Contradictions in Design” (Alice James Books, 2016). This poem is from the upcoming collection “Constellation Route” (Alice James Books, 2022).



Source link

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *