Volume 10, 2010

Why We Must Struggle

Kay Ryan
US Poet Laureate (2008-2010)

If we have not struggled
as hard as we can
at our strongest
how will we sense
the shape of our losses
or know what sustains
us longer or name
what change costs us,
saying how strange
it is that one sector
of the self can step in
for another in trouble,
how loss activates
a latent double, how
we can feed
as upon nectar
upon need?

Excerpt from Say Uncle, copyright ©1991by Kay Ryan.
Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Return to Table of Contents, Volume 10, 2010.