Reading from the Songbook of Self
(Inspired by Mary Cassatt’s painting, Woman Reading in a Garden*)

by Cristina M. R. Norcross

 
When I transferred schools,
moved up to Canada
and switched majors,
I discovered a garden within me.
I found Margaret Atwood,
Margaret Laurence,
Alice Munro.
Their words were blooms in my ears.
My world unfurled, opened up 
to these wordsmiths of the North.
My hands became green leaves,
new shoots of ideas reaching out,
sprouting, turning pages.
Mesmerized by Atwood’s characters surfacing,
entranced by Laurence’s divining rod of truth,
I, too, was coming to the surface,
finding my own words
in the rich soil of experience.
 
I scoured used bookstores,
sat in the reading nook of the library window,
scribbled found thoughts on the bench
near Parliament Hill,
found myself in cups of tea 
and blank notebooks,
took meditative walks 
through ocean waves of snow.
My quiet sanctuary was an 8-hour drive
from the life I once knew.
I was recreating the self, becoming,
one page at a time, one paragraph at a time.
Holding the knowledge of tomorrow
on my tongue like a salted caramel square,
I held the book of me 
close to my beating chest,
hearing music play,
as if for the very first time.


* * * * *

* Link to Mary Cassatt’s painting, Woman Reading in a Garden: https://www.wikiart.org/en/mary-cassatt/woman-reading-in-a-garden-1880 
 
Cristina M. R. Norcross is editor of Blue Heron Review, author of 9 poetry collections, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and an Eric Hoffer Book Award nominee. Her most recent collection is The Sound of a Collective Pulse (Kelsay Books, 2021). Cristina’s work appears in: Visual Verse, Your Daily Poem, Verse-Virtual, The Ekphrastic Review, Pirene’s Fountain, and others, as well as numerous anthologies. Cristina has helped organize community poetry projects, has hosted many readings and is co-founder of Random Acts of Poetry & Art Day. Cristina lives in Wisconsin with her husband and two sons. www.cristinanorcross.com