Each Self

by Andrea Potos

My six-year-old daughter stares into the purpling
copper sky and names it dusk, a just-learned word
she is happy to declare, comparing it to evening
and afternoon. We talk of how the earth turns away
from the sun each night,
a motion so encompassing,
our bodies cannot know it.
I don’t tell her how the child
part of me still disbelieves it—that this globe
actually spins while we breathe, while my daughter
changes invisibly before my eyes,

her infant body submerged inside her
with her toddler waddle and her four-year-old skip,
each swallowed within the other
like the nesting dolls she keeps
on her new desk, each self
perfectly preserved, forsaken
for the one that must come after.

From Yaya’s Cloth. Iris Press, 2007.
Reprinted with permission.

Read this and other poems by Andrea Potos in Yaya’s Cloth, available for purchase online.

Leave it to a mother, while looking out at the sunset with her daughter, to observe how we hold all the selves we’ve ever been inside us like “nesting dolls,” one fitting easily within the next. We “change invisibly” before each other’s eyes, and must “forsake”—no matter how difficult that can be—“each self . . . for the one that must come after.” I love how this poem moves seamlessly from the specific experience of a mother and daughter sharing a moment together, staring “into the purpling/copper sky,” to the more universal message that comes in the second stanza. Andrea Potos’ poem urges us to remember that we are never static, never as stuck or unchanging as we might sometimes feel. There’s a strange comfort in the fact that whoever we are now will inevitably keep shifting as we grow. As Buddhists remind us, change is the nature of everything, and we are not immune as humans. Perhaps we can take solace in all the transitions we’ve already been through and all the selves we’ve shed over the years, trusting that, no matter how distressing change can feel, we already know how to hold it.

Invitation for Writing & Reflection: What are some of the selves you’ve had to shed over the years? How do you feel these selves still nested inside you?

ABOUT THE POET: Andrea Potos

Andrea Potos is the author of several poetry collections, including most recently Marrow of Summer (Kelsay Books), Mothershell (Kelsay Books), A Stone to Carry Home (Salmon Poetry, Ireland), We Lit the Lamps Ourselves (Salmon Poetry) and Yaya’s Cloth (Iris Press). Her poems appear widely online and in print, including most recently The Sun, Poetry East, Lyric, gratefulness.org, How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope, and The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy, both from Storey Publishing. Several of her books received Outstanding Achievement Awards in Poetry from the Wisconsin Library Association. She relishes traveling where she gleans much inspiration for her work. A new collection of poems entitled Her Joy Becomes is forthcoming from Fernwood Press later this year.

POETRY SELECTION AND COMMENTARY BY JAMES CREWS

James Crews is the author of four collections of poetry: The Book of What Stays, Telling My Father, Bluebird, and Every Waking Moment. He is also the editor of two anthologies: Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, The Sun, and have been reprinted in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry and featured on Tracy K. Smith’s podcast, The Slowdown. James teaches at SUNY-Albany and lives with his husband in Vermont.

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