...The 2nd (?) Post of the Day

Poem of the Day:
"Connubial" by Stephen Dunn
Poetry, February 2009


This weekend, two friends whom I met during my semester abroad came to visit me in Cambridge (see the postscript on last night's entry). Their visit has been a lot of fun, and our hangovers were cured enough to attend the Red Sox game tonight! Needless to say I drank water.

Although I have known Kiley and Conor only since January, they know me extremely well. When you share various hostel rooms with people you become very close, very quickly. They have seen me warped with bed bugs. They have seen me fresh out of the shower. They have seen me step off of an overnight bus into Prague, working with four hours of sleep and a crooked neck.

Dunn writes of a woman whom he is getting to know; she is doing the same of him. His short poem is below, in full:


Because with alarming accuracy
she’d been identifying patterns
I was unaware of—this tic, that
tendency, like the way I’ve mastered
the language of intimacy
in order to conceal how I felt—

I knew I was in danger
of being terribly understood.


Whereas Dunn is cognizant of this process, the process of one person becoming intimately aware of another, I was not. And now I have wonderful friends who know me better than most. I feel much less frightened than I do contented. I also, most notably, feel humbled.


Sincerely,
A Poem A Day Audrey