From the Desk of Commissioner Gordon
How poetry and motherhood are similar: both
take you out of your self, blur your boundaries. Here’s
Czeslaw Milosz in "Arts Poetica?": “The purpose
of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just
one person, for our house is open, there are no keys in the
doors, and invisible guests come in and out at will.”
Become a mother and you are never just one person again.
Another similarity: both a baby and a poem masquerade as something
we’ve created, when we know that they arrive from somewhere
beyond us, that they are gifts. When the poetry is working,
it doesn’t feel so much that I’m crafting it as
that it’s presenting itself. Of course it’s not
often like this, but it has been--the bright ribbon of the
poem unspooling in my mind and waiting while my fingers fasten
it to the paper. I’ve had that. God, I’ve had
that.
And it’s the same with my daughter Claire, but more
so. People look at her and they say, “Oh, she’s
so smart, so verbal!” They say, “What a delightful
child.” What do I say? I say, “Thank you.”
As if it were my doing. But really I want to say, “I
know! I can’t understand it! From where did this creature
arrive?”
There’s so much in her I can’t take credit for.
The past few days she’s been calling me “Missy
Gorio.” I haven’t understood what this meant,
which has frustrated her. Last night, I was fastening the
cape onto the Velcro tabs at the shoulders of her Batman pajamas--got
them in the boy’s section and we both adore them--and
she again called me “Missy Gorio.” For the first
time I realized she meant “Commissioner Gordon.”
“Yes, Batman?” I asked her. And she threw her
chubby arms around Commissioner Gordon’s neck, who kissed
her happily before tucking her snugly into the Bat Cave.
