*Nov 15 2025 | "The Raincoat" by Ada Limón

This one features from The Carrying by Ada Limón

When the doctor suggested surgery
and a brace for all my youngest years,
my parents scrambled to take me
to massage therapy, deep tissue work,
osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine
unspooled a bit, I could breathe again,
and move more in a body unclouded
by pain. My mom would tell me to sing
songs to her the whole forty-five-minute
drive to Middle Two Rock Road and forty-
five minutes back from physical therapy.
She’d say that even my voice sounded unfettered
by my spine afterward. So I sang and sang,
because I thought she liked it. I never
asked her what she gave up to drive me,
or how her day was before this chore. Today,
at her age, I was driving myself home from yet
another spine appointment, singing along
to some maudlin but solid song on the radio,
and I saw a mom take her raincoat off
and give it to her young daughter when
a storm took over the afternoon. My god,
I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her
raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel
that I never got wet.

What a beautiful realisation.... it's the easiest thing in the world for a mother to do these things; almost automatic because it's your purpose, a reason for existing. And what you receive from being a mother is a lot more than you ever give up. :)

Thank you for sharing @GraceCollection

>1 GraceCollection: this is a lovely poem in how it looks back, where the speaker feels safe because of her mother. And the singing is a really nice touch, as she does this because she thinks her mother likes it. It's also a brave poem in how the speaker is limited by her body but carries on, BUT the speaker is not feeling sorry for herself, she comes across as being very strong. And it's lovely, how 'today' in see seeing a mum take off her raincoat she realizes her own strength comes from her mother. Just lovely.

Ah, the poet realizing it was a marvel, only a different one.

>1 GraceCollection: I quite like the line break following "I've been under her," (line break) "raincoat." The first time I read it took me a second to realise this the raincoat was a continuation of the previous line. I had this image of her being under her mother, like a chick under her mothers wings.

This was beautiful Grace

I recently added this collection to my shelves, so I am of course interested to see everyone's comments. A lot of Modern American poetry does not resonate too much with me as it is simply too free form and unstructured, but Limon is an exception.

I adore the closing of the poem - truly evocative!

I believe this is our group's first weekly poem by any poet laureate, America's current one. Thank you, @GraceCollection.

i love the sentiment here and taking a moment to be with that stunning parental love. I'm a mother and a grandmother and yet still frequently have revelations of things my mother or father, both deceased, did for me. The revelations hit me suddenly just as they hit the narrator in this poem, filling me with sudden amazement and gratitude.

Does anyone know if this type of poem has been given a name, the modern trend of using a prose-like style? By doing so, it's egalitarian and open to understanding by any reader, even those that engage very little with poetry.

I agree with @PaulCranswick this one is done very well.

Interestingly, I've read short stories (some extremely short) that are poem-like. It's like this poem and those short stories are blends of the two genres.

>7 DebiCates: The general style, Debi, is free verse, and it is written in a conversational tone so it would probably be classified as "conversational free verse".

I am glad this resonated with people. It was a toss-up for me between several poems, but this one made me tear up upon first reading. I'm glad to get to share it.

This free verse works very well, it has a rhythm and is not so "free" as to be completely conversational, at least, not in the sense of meandering or leaving one cadence for another, without rhyme or reason. (sic) When done well, it's immediately recognisable as such by the reader, but not at all easy to pull off.

I'm reminded of the stereotypical reaction to a modern abstract painting: "I could have done that!", some unimpressed viewer is alleged to say. "There's no painterly skill there, it's just splashes or dabs of paint!" No, I think, I don't think you could do it. I am confident I would see straight away a canvas you marked up, compared to works done skillfully, like this one.

>10 elenchus: Who are the blasphemers against free verse? Poetry really came into its own with free verse :D

>11 SandraArdnas: LOL

In my experience the blasphemers are of a different stripe: the most notorious are those who argue that free verse is nothing more than writing a block of text, inserting erratic line breaks, and declaring: "This is free verse!" (which it is), and implying "It's as good as all other free verse!" (which it is not).