Skip to content
All the parts of my life
All the parts of my life

"I am trying to hold in one steady glance / all the parts of my life." — Adrienne Rich, from the poem "Toward the Solstice"

  • Home
  • About
  • I Published a Book!
  • Lighted Lake Press
  • Questions? Feedback? Misspellings?
  • Opt-out preferences
All the parts of my life

"I am trying to hold in one steady glance / all the parts of my life." — Adrienne Rich, from the poem "Toward the Solstice"

A new poem

August 24, 2008

As the subject line says, I wrote a new poem. As usual, this shouldn’t be considered a final version, as I may decide to change any or all of it in future.

Again

My head got stuck in the jaws of anger
today; crazy hijacked my afternoon.

It doesn’t last, I say, it doesn’t last –
and I pretend to listen and believe,

as though I were a creditable source.
And that’s the truth, it doesn’t last – but damn,

it always, always crashes back – and ten
by twenty thousand times, it kicks me down.

But I am sitting here, I am alive.
I try to find some solace in these words,

some meaning in the pain, again, again,
a measure of protection … for next time.

The roaring storm is no more than a sigh
when set against the years that fly away.

© All the parts of my life 2008-2015.
depression poetry

Post navigation

Previous post
Next post

Related Posts

I call it “All the parts” because …

May 17, 2008

In the summer of 1993, my Aunt Helen lent me the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley. When I returned it to her, I told her my biggest secret: that I had been sexually abused when I was a child. She said to me, as we both…

Read More

FreeVerse: “Small Bodies” by Mary Oliver

March 25, 2010

So often, I think about participating in FreeVerse, a weekly meme hosted by Cara at Ooh…Books! on Wednesdays. And so often, Wednesday sneaks up on me and I think, “Darn it, it’s already Wednesday again and I don’t have a poem to post for FreeVerse!” Today, I brought one of…

Read More

Discovering a mesmerizing novel: Florida

October 3, 2009

Last spring, I bought two books by a new-to-me author from the clearance shelves at Hastings. Her name is Christine Schutt, and I’d never heard of her. Besides the clearance price of $2.99, I remember two other things that drew me to the novel Florida: first, that’s also the title…

Read More

Comments (2)

  1. Marie says:
    August 25, 2008 at 4:59 pm

    I like the way you’ve expressed yourself in this poem. It’s already impressive as it is; I’d be interested to see how it turns out in its more “final” version.

    Reply
  2. HeathMochaFrost says:
    August 27, 2008 at 5:45 pm

    Thanks for the positive feedback, Marie! I don’t really know if I’ll make changes to it – sometimes I need to look back at it after weeks or months, and then decide something between, “That’s still all right!” and “Yuck, it’s really not as good as I thought it was, now I’m embarrassed!” If I do additional edits, I’ll run the new version by ya. 😉 Thank you again!

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Popular Posts

Categories

RSS
Facebook
Facebook
fb-share-icon
X (Twitter)
Visit Us
Post on X
©2026 All the parts of my life | WordPress Theme by SuperbThemes
Manage Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
  • Manage options
  • Manage services
  • Manage {vendor_count} vendors
  • Read more about these purposes
View preferences
  • {title}
  • {title}
  • {title}