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Those early days, when you were small enough to carry, my entire life curved like a nautilus around you. You were separate, but not severed.
Never have I been so raw, child, as I felt bringing you into this world of both violets and beheadings.
How can we remain open? What choice do we have but to don our armor in order to go forth each day?
But to be most alive we must be willing to be broken, over and over, to keep our palms open, those muscles in our chests un-barbed, in whatever body we're given.
So may you open like the orchid, my child, I beseech you. The wind blows, the leaves fall. There is no compass but love.
"On Breaking" is published with kind permission of the author.
The ALL Review is pleased to present our How to Live series, poems chosen to help readers navigate these difficult and rapidly changing times.
Heather Swan's poems have appeared in such journals as Terrain, Minding Nature, Poet Lore, Phoebe, The Raleigh Review, The Hopper, Midwestern Gothic and Cold Mountain, and in many anthologies. She is the author of the poetry collections A Kinship with Ash (Terrapin), which was a finalist for the ASLE Book Award, and Dandelion (Terrapin). She is also a recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, the Maud Weinshenk Award, the August Derleth Prize for Poetry, and an honorable mention for the Lorine Niedecker Award. Her nonfiction has appeared in Aeon, Belt, Catapult, Edge Effects, Emergence, ISLE, Minding Nature, and The Learned Pig. Her book Where Honeybees Thrive: Stories from the Field (Penn State Press) won the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award. A companion book, Where the Grass Still Sings: Stories of Insects and Interconnection, will be released in May 2024. She teaches environmental literature and... Read More
April 2020
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