TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown. 

Names are so powerful. They give you a sense of belonging. I’m always curious about the names parents choose for their children, and the terms of endearment they use for loved ones. I call my daughter Sissa, for example. I suppose it began because she’s the big sister in the family.

My name is Maggie—not Margaret, just Maggie—but the name I hear most often on a daily basis might be Mom. I have my children to thank for that name, because they made me a mother. In this way, we birthed each other. And we continue to shape each other, over the years. Surely I would be different if I had different children. Surely they would be different with other parents.

Today’s incredibly moving poem is about fathers and sons, and estrangement and connection. I also think it’s about starting anew with our own children, and giving them what they need, no matter what we received—or didn’t—from our own parents. 

Dear Boy: Despite my return to running water
and migratory moods, I have spent your life

trying to break the feathered wheel of habit
in my voice, to bring you evidence

that I am done revising the seasons of storm—:
the God-cycles of hurt breath.           There I go again . . .

***

Dear Boy: I played you the voicemails
my father left years ago and understood then 

how my tongue will also travel, will mutate
to find you—will draw whatever blood

it takes to carry the word father  to your feet.

***

Dear Boy: I witnessed the moment
your mother galvanized pain into a water-

way you ran to get here—: forget that 
and forfeit the first promise pumped inside

your chest. Cut that and you might as well
spill a sudden bucket of your own blood.

Not a day has passed without the word woman
holding you in its mouth:—holy with movement.

***

Dear Boy: Let the record show we invented
one another: family—a lighted story

set against the shadow and dawn of distances.
When I am gone, hold and heat the vastness

of this creation—:       Don’t stop speaking to me.

***

Dear Boy: On the second message
my father is saying, I just had to 

listen to your voice—haven’t heard you
in a while.  And the tribe in his throat

trembles.        How many gardens have I 
abandoned to this grief?

—: For the Son so loved the worry
He gave His only begotten reality

and called the Father back.

***

Dear Boy: In the beginning 
father  was a fear I wanted 

to call love. For years I waded
heart-deep into that doubt

for a version of my name
I could, with some forgiveness,

cast before your image.
Dear Boy: Here’s my hand—

because your arrival has 
mended the grave current

of time, in the beginning
I was talking to you.

“The Night Angler" by Geffrey Davis from NIGHT ANGLER © 2019 Geffrey Davis. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of BOA Editions.