Flowers For Socrates

by NONA BLYTH CLOUD

I guess it’s human nature to try to make things fit, whether it’s putting on roof tiles, or papers we need to file, or sorting the animal kingdom into family, genus and species – most of us feel compelled to make order out of the chaos all around us. Order makes us feel safer, and more in control of our lives.

Order can also be a delusion that makes us complacent. We become vulnerable to dangers that would be obvious, if only we were paying more attention. One of the most important functions of Art is to make us uncomfortable, to shake things up. Art makes us see anew, shakes some dust off our brains, and scrapes at the rust on our hearts.

Several critics have referred to Maxine Kumin (1925–2014) as a poet of “maturity” who got a “late start” in writing. She’s also been labeled a “regional” writer because of her strong connection to her native New England, and to life on her beloved farm in “rural New Hampshire,” and that’s led to many comparisons, some dismissive, with Robert Frost.

The danger of these labels is that they make her sound “old-fashioned” at best, and stodgy or boring at worst.
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So before you buy into those labels, please read this poem:

After Love

Afterward, the compromise.
Bodies resume their boundaries.

These legs, for instance, mine.
Your arms take you back in.

Spoons of our fingers, lips
admit their ownership.

The bedding yawns, a door
blows aimlessly ajar

and overhead, a plane
singsongs coming down.

Nothing is changed, except
there was a moment when

the wolf, the mongering wolf
who stands outside the self

lay lightly down, and slept.

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