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Column 058

There Is Another Way

Intro by Ted Kooser
05.10.2006

A worm in an apple, a mag­got in a bone, a per­son in the world. What might seem an odd assort­ment of crea­tures is beau­ti­ful­ly inter­re­lat­ed by the Mass­a­chu­setts poet Pat Schnei­der. Her poem sug­gests that each liv­ing thing is rich­ly awake to its own par­tic­u­lar, lim­it­ed world. 

There Is Another Way

There is another way to enter an apple:
a worm’s way.
The small, round door
closes behind her. The world
and all its necessities
ripen around her like a room.

In the sweet marrow of a bone,
the maggot does not remember
the wingspread
of the mother, the green
shine of her body, nor even
the last breath of the dying deer.

I, too, have forgotten
how I came here, breathing
this sweet wind, drinking rain,
encased by the limits
of what I can imagine
and by a husk of stars.

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We do not accept unsolicited submissions

We do not accept unsolicited submissions. 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. Reprinted from Another River: New and Selected Poems, Amherst Writers & Artists Press, 2005, by permission of the author. First printed in Kalliope, Vol. XII, No. 1, 1989. Copyright © 2004 by Pat Schneider. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.