The Road Beneath Our Feet
Allegheny Mountains. Pennsylvania - 2002
How A Poem Begins
It’s a little thing. Could be
the long o’s in Kosovo, or
a woman
alone in the street
after the hurricane
sweeping Honduras.
Perhaps we tell of a child
beneath the flood
in New Orleans, or
feet bloody from
walking the rubble
of Afghanistan.
They say poetry is
Insignificant,
such a tiny voice
no one can hear.
sometimes it says
“I can't breathe.”
That's why we write of such
little things, insignificant things.
— Grace Cavalieri
Grace Cavalieri is Maryland’s tenth Poet Laureate. Her new books are Grace Art: Poems & Paintings and The Secret Letters of Madame de Stael (both 2021). Her latest play, “Quilting The Sun,” was produced at the Theater for the New City, NYC, in 2019. Grace founded and produces “the Poet and the Poem” for public radio, now from the Library of Congress, celebrating 44 years on air. Forthcoming, in 2022, is Grace’s The Long Game: Selected and New Poems. Photo by Mike Morgan.
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