I’d never heard of poet Kay Ryan when I picked up a copy of “The New Yorker” and read her poem “The Long Up” while sitting in a waiting room for one of our seemingly never-ending therapy appointments. This was 2011, when Ryan already had been named the sixteenth United States Poet Laureate and awarded the Pulitzer Prize. In those years, I didn’t know of Ryan’s accomplishments, and how could I, when my days and months were consumed with searching for whatever it was that would help peace descend on my house, my family, my kids. I couldn’t dedicate energy or time to anything except placing one foot in front of another to get through another day.
Everyone says teenage years are the hardest, but for us, it was the beginning: those early years when I didn’t understand my children or their internal journeys, so unlike anything I’d ever seen or experienced or heard of.
On that afternoon in the waiting room when I picked up the magazine, Kay Ryan’s simple, vivid lines soared off the page and landed straight in my soul. I dug out my journal from my purse—the journal in which my most constant refrain was a scratched and repeated “I can’t do this!! Help me!!!,” underline, underline—and copied the poem in its entirety. Her words gave me hope.
On the eve of 2019, Ryan’s poem may resonate in your soul, too. I’m with you in spirit. Xoxoxo
“The Long Up”
By Kay Ryan
You can see the
land flattening out
near the top. The
long up you’ve faced
is going to stop.
Your eyes feast
on space instead
of pitch as though
you’d been released.
The measured pace
you’ve kept corrupts
with fifty yards
to do—fifty
times as hard
against the blue.
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