A Story For Rose On The Midnight Flight To Boston Poem by Anne Sexton
A Story For Rose On The Midnight Flight To Boston
Until tonight they were separate specialties,
different stories, the best of their own worst.
Riding my warm cabin home, I remember Betsy's
laughter; she laughed as you did, Rose, at the first
story. Someday, I promised her, I'll be someone
going somewhere and we plotted it in the humdrum
school for proper girls. The next April the plane
bucked me like a horse, my elevators turned
and fear blew down my throat, that last profane
gauge of a stomach coming up. And then returned
to land, as unlovely as any seasick sailor,
sincerely eighteen; my first story, my funny failure.
Maybe Rose, there is always another story,
better unsaid, grim or flat or predatory.
Half a mile down the lights of the in-between cities
turn up their eyes at me. And I remember Betsy's
story, the April night of the civilian air crash
and her sudden name misspelled in the evening paper,
the interior of shock and the paper gone in the trash
ten years now. She used the return ticket I gave her.
This was the rude kill of her; two planes cracking
in mid-air over Washington, like blind birds.
And the picking up afterwards, the morticians tracking
bodies in the Potomac and piecing them like boards
to make a leg or a face. There is only her miniature
photograph left, too long now for fear to remember.
Special tonight because I made her into a story
that I grew to know and savor.
A reason to worry,
Rose, when you fix an old death like that,
and outliving the impact, to find you've pretended.
We bank over Boston. I am safe. I put on my hat.
I am almost someone going home. The story has ended.
Exciting images … she still breathes, with suffers and has a good time in her verses … «The history has not just end …»
Wonderful but tragic poem touch the heart Anne. Congrats for being member of the day Col Muhammad Khalid Khan
This poem " A Story For Rose On The Midnight Flight To Boston" is a beautiful poem having touching expression. Thanks and congratulations for being chosen this poem as the modern poem of the poem of the day.
A beautifully envisioned story poem with an unique style of narration of the pathetic plane crash and it's aftermath. Well deserved modern poem of the day.
The next April the plane bucked me like a horse, my elevators turned and fear blew down my throat, that last profane gauge of a stomach coming up. very fine poem. tony
These dark and tragic, images are etched on this reader's heart. Thanks for sharing and congratulations on POD. Well-deserved. : -)
These dark and tragic, images are etched on this reader's heart. Thanks for sharing and congratulations on POD. Well-deserved. : -)
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
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12/4/2024 12:12:43 PM # 1.0.0
This is a fantastic poem, very poignant and tragic, and deserves a much higher rating than it has so far, a measly 2.7 out of five. Anne Sexton., if she were still alive and in control of her poet page, would delete all the scores and make us start over.