1DebiCates
NPM 2026, Day 29 "Yes..."
Every time I read a poem, it's a focused moment of introduction to something I often didn't know I knew, but needed to know and think about. Poems can also be a slice of history or of those things that never change, and that shattering recognition of the shared human condition since our beginnings. I marvel at structure, freedom, intensity, a phrase that makes me sigh deeply as if I just saw God. I so often weep, overwhelmed. I also experience that refreshed gladness that poetry exists, is still being written, is still needed like sunshine and funerals. It's so lovely here, among other poetry travelers, visiting rows of Saturday poem temples, in joint affirmation, our Yes.
What poem best describes what you love and need in poetry?
For me, here's one, an extract from an Elizabeth Bishop's poem, The Moose, about travelers on a bus somewhere in Nova Scotia.
In the creakings and noises,
an old conversation
—not concerning us,
but recognizable, somewhere,
back in the bus:
Grandparents’ voices
uninterruptedly
talking, in Eternity:
names being mentioned,
things cleared up finally;
what he said, what she said,
who got pensioned;
deaths, deaths and sicknesses;
the year he remarried;
the year (something) happened.
She died in childbirth.
That was the son lost
when the schooner foundered.
He took to drink. Yes.
She went to the bad.
When Amos began to pray
even in the store and
finally the family had
to put him away.
“Yes ...” that peculiar
affirmative. “Yes ...”
A sharp, indrawn breath,
half groan, half acceptance,
that means “Life’s like that.
We know it (also death).”
Elizabeth Bishop portrait, linocut reduction print, 8"x8", oil, Debi Cates, 2014
Every time I read a poem, it's a focused moment of introduction to something I often didn't know I knew, but needed to know and think about. Poems can also be a slice of history or of those things that never change, and that shattering recognition of the shared human condition since our beginnings. I marvel at structure, freedom, intensity, a phrase that makes me sigh deeply as if I just saw God. I so often weep, overwhelmed. I also experience that refreshed gladness that poetry exists, is still being written, is still needed like sunshine and funerals. It's so lovely here, among other poetry travelers, visiting rows of Saturday poem temples, in joint affirmation, our Yes.
What poem best describes what you love and need in poetry?
For me, here's one, an extract from an Elizabeth Bishop's poem, The Moose, about travelers on a bus somewhere in Nova Scotia.
In the creakings and noises,
an old conversation
—not concerning us,
but recognizable, somewhere,
back in the bus:
Grandparents’ voices
uninterruptedly
talking, in Eternity:
names being mentioned,
things cleared up finally;
what he said, what she said,
who got pensioned;
deaths, deaths and sicknesses;
the year he remarried;
the year (something) happened.
She died in childbirth.
That was the son lost
when the schooner foundered.
He took to drink. Yes.
She went to the bad.
When Amos began to pray
even in the store and
finally the family had
to put him away.
“Yes ...” that peculiar
affirmative. “Yes ...”
A sharp, indrawn breath,
half groan, half acceptance,
that means “Life’s like that.
We know it (also death).”
Elizabeth Bishop portrait, linocut reduction print, 8"x8", oil, Debi Cates, 2014
