American Life in Poetry

So much of what we learn about life comes from exchanging stories, and this poem by a Californian, Peter Everwine, portrays that kind of teaching. I love the moment where he says he doesn’t know if the story is true but it ought to be.

A Story Can Change Your Life

On the morning she became a young widow,

my grandmother, startled by a sudden shadow,

looked up from her work to see a hawk turn

her prized rooster into a cloud of feathers.

That same moment, halfway around the world

in a Minnesota mine, her husband died,

buried under a ton of rockfall.

She told me this story sixty years ago.

I don’t know if it’s true but it ought to be.

She was a hard old woman, and though she knelt

on Sundays when the acolyte’s silver bell

announced the moment of Christ’s miracle,

it was the darker mysteries she lived by:

shiver-cry of an owl, black dog by the roadside,

a tapping at the door and nobody there.

The moral of the story was plain enough:

miracles become a burden and require a priest

to explain them. With signs, you only need

to keep your wits about you and place your trust

in a shadow world that lets you know hard luck

and grief are coming your way. And for that

– so the story goes – any day will do.