Monday Morning Musing: Poets in the Neighborhood

January 9, 2023

Columbus, OH

I can’t remember when I first knew of the poet Maggie Smith (not the actress, who I absolutely think is also wonderful) but shortly after moving to beautiful Bexley, I learned that Maggie Smith lives here. In Bexley. In South Bexley, which is also where we live. Sometimes in her poetry she will mention her street name and it’s only 3 blocks away. I think it would be very weird indeed to look for her, but I must confess that when I’m in the local market or bookstore or coffee shop or library I wonder if I would realize who she was were I to round a corner and find her there.

One of the reasons her poetry resonates with me is because she also endured the heartache of the end of a marriage in her lifetime. Divorce is a unique sorrow and even when it is the best or only choice it leaves one, maybe even everyone, wounded.

I’m enjoying Maggie Smith’s volume of poetry entitled Goldenrod, alongside a couple of other poets and more than a few theologians. Here’s a poem for this second Monday in January by Maggie Smith (my neighbor!):

Threshold

You want a door you can be

on both sides of at once.

You want to be

on both sides of here

and there, now and then,

together and – (what

do we call the life

we would wish back,

if we could? The before?

--alone. But any open

space may be

a threshold, an arch

of entering and leaving.

crossing a field , wading

through nothing but

timothy grass

Imagine yourself passing from

and into. Passing through

doorway after

doorway after doorway.

I took this photo in 2016, at the Vatican in Rome.