Sleep well, Madeline L'Engle
"Don't worry about Charles Wallace, Meg," her father had once told her. Meg remembered it very clearly because it was shortly before he went away. "There's nothing the matter with his mind. He just does things in his own way and in his own time."
I'm pretty sure A Wrinkle in Time is the first novel I ever read. And Charles Wallace was the first literary character I identified with strongly. We never forget the first time, as it were, and consequently many of the images from L'Engle's books pop up in my work from time to time:
REVISIONIST HISTORY SWEETHEART
A monolith of blue
goo
frozen to a molten
hill.
Lit handprints for
an old-style
breakdown.
Curlicued winds &
a brazen output.
Jellyfish women
in the border towns.
Slick bloodstone
in the breastbone,
a tesseract.
O please
let me be
with this sweet
surface.
6 comments:
This poem was originally published in The Sunday Morning Anthology, edited by Christina Strong.
for me--it's not a book--but THE NEVERENDING STORY pops up a lot.
i dig this poem.
sure would be nice if your book would come out.
i'm just sayin'.
tesseract?!! Yeah. I have a recording of her sermon at St. John The Divine. Fantastic old lady. Wrinkle in Time. Have to read that again.
yes yes...all of it.
This is one of the first novels from my childhood consciousness as well. My mother started reading it to me when the fall I was in second grade in Maine, during Hurricane Gloria when the electricity was out.
This book, along with the aforementioned, brings back great memories!
I really enjoyed your poem.
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