April 30: Deborah Digges’s “Write a Book a Year”

We end the month by honoring Deborah Digges, who took her own life on April 10, 2009. This poem—a reminder that the call to poetry is powerful beyond measure—will appear in her posthumous collection, The Wind Blows Through the Doors of My Heart, to be published next week.

Thank you for reading with us this April.

Write a Book a Year

Well the wild ride into the earth was thrilling,
really, scared as I was and torn and sore.
I say what other woman could have managed it?
My life before then
picking flowers against my destiny
what glance, what meeting,
who was watching, what we don’t know we know,
the hour we chose and we are chosen.
And suddenly the dead my mission,
the dark my mission.
He’d find me pounding out the hours.
Spring is for women, spring clawing at our hearts.
We are pulled forward by our hair
to be anointed in the barren garden.
I want the dark back, the bloody well of it,
my face before the fire,
or lie alone on the cold stone and find a way
to sleep awhile, wake clear and wander.

Learn more about The Wind Blows Through the Doors of My Heart

Poetry month is over, but this doesn’t have to be the end!

Sign up for the Knopf e-newsletter, The Borzoi Reader, to find out about new releases from Knopf, including poetry titles.

If you missed last year’s Poem-A-Day selection, or just want to experience it again, sign up for our 2009 Poem-A-Day collection at DailyLit.