There’s a hole in this poem, a hole
where all the usual ways I know
to write a poem are stuffed to block
the cold wind of the unexpected,
a hole that allows the loud world
to decide which portion of itself
to poke through and require me
to describe it or address it, a hole
that, left open, keens and moans,
howls or bellows as what blows
through it sounds like a sorrow
that would be mine if I so chose.
But not tonight. Tonight I seal
and caulk the breach with what
my words can also do: protect me
until morning when I’m stronger.
Richard Hoffman is the author of nine books, including the memoirs Half the House and Love & Fury; the story collection Interference and other stories; the essay collection Remembering the Alchemists and other essays; and five books of poems: Without Paradise; Gold Star Road, which won the 2006 Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize and the New England Poetry Club’s Sheila Motton Book Award; Emblem; Noon until Night, winner of the 2018 Massachusetts Book Award for poetry; and People Once Real.
