Poem-a-Day - "Not Once" by Sharon Olds

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February 2, 2022 

Not Once

Sharon Olds

Not once—not when I toppled, rigid, a
5'7" pine felled,
stiff as a board, a five and a half foot
plank, 16 x 32,
and not while I wallowed on the rug among
his oxygen tubes and my cane and his 8
wheelchair wheels, and not when I sat by his
hospice bed, chirping I’m fine!,
and not the next day, when the brilliant violet
and black slash-slathered in my easy-life skin,
or days later when the purple turned yellow and the
blue green—never once when I
said No pain, Nothing broken,
did I feel lucky, did I measure the force of the
blow, the floor speeding up like a heavy-weight’s
smash to my cheek and eyebrow, not until
today, did I begin to feel
grateful for my good fortune—no concussion, no
fracture—as if I expected to be able to be
struck by the earth, a wrecking ball,
and not feel it—
as when someone on the other side of the world,
or the city, is struck in my name, I do not feel it.

Copyright © 2022 by Sharon Olds. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 2, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“Eighteen months quarantined in a house in the woods—near a road with two neighbors’ houses on it (not quite in sight, all of us keeping in strict isolation)—I slowly learned some things about class, race, privilege, and entitlement. My beloved had died in February 2020. My brother died in August of that year. My children and grandchildren were far away and well. My life had so much love in it, so much fear. I had learned so much with Carl in our last two years. I was ready to learn more.”
Sharon Olds

Sharon Olds is the author of Balladz, forthcoming from Knopf in 2022. The recipient of the 2016 Wallace Stevens Award, she formerly served as the New York State Poet Laureate and as a chancellor at the Academy of American Poets. She lives in New York City, on the land of the Lenape people.

Balladz
(Knopf, 2022)

“The Rule of Opulence” by Khadijah Queen
read more
“A Short Tablature of Loss” by Rodney Gomez
read more

Thanks to John Murillo, author of Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry (Four Way Books, 2020), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Listen to a Q&A about Murillo’s curatorial approach and find out more about our guest editors for the year.
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