This month we’re writing “In the Style Of…” Wallace Stevens’ Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, that perfect prism of perspectives, that beautiful list of looking, that incantation.

The idea, I think, was that each of us would find our own thing to hold a microscope (or telescope) to, that we would also see things in five, or nine, or thirteen ways. Nearly everything is worthy of being paid attention to like that, honestly, so it’s just a matter of choosing something…

But it just so happened that I found myself with my eldest daughter this week, in New York where she lives. And I found myself looking at her, and looking at the world with and through her, as I always do, as I have since she made me a mama. It is a pleasure so pure that I am giddy, a nostalgia so sharp it could make me weep. What a miracle to have this assignment waiting for me…

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Daughter
(After Wallace Stevens’ Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird)
Liz Garton Scanlon

I

The downy head
nestled into the notch
at my neck
was my daughter’s

II

I unfolded, becoming
someone new,
someone unfamiliar,
shaped like who I was
meant to be

III

My daughter held onto
my hair, she reached out
for something beyond me,
something I could not see

IV

We were people
who called
each other
family

V

I wanted
to stop time,
I wanted to hold
every moving moment
like a warm egg in my hand

VI

Each cry
broke crystal,
each laugh
grew wings

VII

Suddenly
she was everywhere
like wind and water,
like all the birds
in a tree pushing off
at the same time

VIII

She was the shape
of the world,
she was the way
we learned to fly
beyond ourselves

IX

Finding her meant following
dropped crumbs and stitches
to see where we’d been,
to see where she’d landed

X

She didn’t belong
to anyone
and she never had

XI

A crowd gathered
around her, leaning in
to love her, parting
to let her through

XII

Listen to that
impossibly singular song

XIII

The woman
stepping off the train,
bag on her shoulder,
small silver bird nestled
into the notch of her neck,
was my daughter,
is still, is always
my daughter

Read the others here:
Tricia
Tanita
Mary Lee
Sara
Kelly
Laura