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American Life in Poetry: Column 231

This column originates on the campus of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and at the beginning of each semester, we see parents helping their children move into their dorm rooms and apartments and looking a little shaken by the process. This wonderful poem by Sue Ellen Thompson of Maryland captures not only a moment like that, but a mother’s feelings as well.

 

Helping My Daughter Move into Her First Apartment

 

This is all I am to her now:

a pair of legs in running shoes,

 

two arms strung with braided wire.

She heaves a carton sagging with CDs 

 

at me and I accept it gladly, lifting

with my legs, not bending over,

 

raising each foot high enough

to clear the step. Fortunate to be

 

of any use to her at all,

I wrestle, stooped and single-handed,

 

with her mattress in the stairwell,

saying nothing as it pins me,

 

sweating, to the wall. Vacuum cleaner,

spiny cactus, five-pound sacks 

 

of rice and lentils slumped

against my heart: up one flight 

 

of stairs and then another,

down again with nothing in my arms

 

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2006 by Sue Ellen Thompson, and reprinted from When She Named Fire, ed., Andrea Hollander Budy, Autumn House Press, 2009, and reprinted by permission of the poet and publisher.  First printed in The Golden Hour, Sue Ellen Thompson, Autumn House Press, 2006. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.