Sunday Poetry

By alison February 6, 2011 2 Comments 1 Min Read

Marginalia

Finding an old book on a basement shelf—
gray, spine bent—and reading it again,
I met my former, unfamiliar, self,
some of her notes and scrawls so alien
that, though I tried, I couldn’t get (behind
this gloss or that) back to the time she wrote
to guess what experiences she had in mind,
the living context of some scribbled note;
or see the girl beneath the purple ink
who chose this phrase or that to underline,
the mood, the boy, that lay behind her thinking—
but they were thoughts I recognized as mine;
and though there were words I couldn’t even read,
blobs and cross-outs; and though not a jot
remained of her old existence—I agreed
with the young annotator’s every thought:
A clever girl. So what would she see fit
to comment on—and what would she have to say
about the years that she and I have written
since—before we put the book away?
Deborah Warren

2 Comments

  1. Dori says:

    Oh, heavens…I love this! I found one of my journals with writings from over 24 years ago, when I was pregnant with my first. The words were familiar, yet alien, but so sweet they brought me to tears!

  2. Alexandra says:

    What a lovely poem! I discovered your blog a few days ago and I just adore it. Keep it up! xxx

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