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Poem: I Gave My Love a Story

Could anyone use a lullaby? I’m sure the poet Tess Taylor never guessed the word “virus” would become the center of a season. (But how are they “wise”?) No one could question the way old lullabies bounce back into mind when a new generation rolls around, or a need arises. In Taylor’s stunning new book, “Rift Zone,” we are faced with the unsteadiness of our current universe, the many “minor scales” unfurling inside our days, as well as ways of feeling connected through time and trouble. Selected by Naomi Shihab Nye

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Credit...Illustration by R.O. Blechman

By Tess Taylor

Now it is night again, child on my chest.
I croon & my song drifts you towards rest.

As I chant in darkness you are also learning
to hear minor scales chime & fourths falling.

Together we hover inside a melody
many dead mothers once sung before.

Tonight the cherry still has no stone.
Tonight I rock you out of bodily memory

& these songs are older than we are;
& this tune I hum is wise as a virus;

it makes me a vector
for rhythm & cadence —

(tonight the chicken still has no bone):
The song lives on, persists & persists —


Naomi Shihab Nye is the 2019-22 Young People’s Poet Laureate of the Poetry Foundation in Chicago. Her new book is “Cast Away” (Greenwillow Books). Tess Taylor lives in El Cerrito, Calif. She has recently been a distinguished Fulbright scholar at Queens University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. “Rift Zone,” her third book of poetry, was published by Red Hen Press this month.

Illustration by R.O. Blechman

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