Poets You Should Know -- SHARON OLDS

SHARON OLDS

Every once in awhile you stumble across a poem that reaches inside of you into places you didn't know your body contained. Sharon Olds has written poems that do just that. This fact serves as brown paper bag with which we should wrap our sweating 40 ounce bottle that contains our soul.

• She is the author of numerous works including Satan Says (1980), The Dead and the Living (1984), and The Father (1993). 
• She teaches creative writing at New York University.

STATION

by Sharon Olds

Coming in off the dock after writing,

I approached the house,

and saw your long grandee face

in the light of a lamp with a parchment shade

the color of flame.

An elegant hand on your beard. Your tapered

eyes found me on the lawn. You looked

as the lord looks down from a narrow window

and you are descended from lords. Calmly, with no

hint of shyness you examined me,

the wife who runs out on the dock to write

as soon as one child is in bed,

leaving the other to you.

Your long

mouth, flexible as an archer’s bow,

did not curve. We spent a long moment

in the truth of our situation, the poems

heavy as poached game hanging from my hands.