Poem Ending with a Line by Deborah Digges

Sometimes when I cannot write I remember my professor’s 
                               astonishing beauty, 
                                                                    how we fell before the heft 
               of her hair, lay down on her creased pages 
& slept in despair like field mice under a rainy hedge. 
                             Those dreaming days. 
                                                                         I’m older now than she 
was when she jumped to her death off a stadium 
                             in Amherst. I’m older than I have ever imagined. 
               Time turns not inward but out toward the edges, 
spiraling, spun, blowing. I want less & 
                              less; I don’t want anything
               back. Despite my imagination there are never any ghosts,
                                             only trees. I found trees. 
& feints of light underneath. 
                                                              Once I startled awake 
on a long flight & believed myself back between
                                            hotel sheets again, white air humming 
                with quiet. On those narrow ledges brightness
                                 refracts & time slides into revision.
                                                I think I cannot write but then I do.
I check the date 
               & it’s the day she died fourteen years ago. 
                             I contradict myself because what is haunting.
I contradict myself by giving way, 
                                                                in giving away.
When I cannot write I type & type 
                                                          & back-
              space over the outcry until only blankness fills 
instead. 
                             I think I can convince myself that everything
can be taken away & I will stand tree-like, 
                                                                                still green
but when I look back, I am not there.

Katharine Whitcomb (she/her)

Katharine Whitcomb is the author of three full-length books of poetry, the most recent being Habitats, published by Poetry NW Editions.

Poet’s Note:

“Poem Ending with a Line by Deborah Digges” is an elegy and an homage. I have been greatly inspired as a writer by the work of Deborah Digges, who died by apparent suicide in 2009. She was a professor at Vermont College of Fine Arts while I was studying there for my MFA in Writing. Her last two collections of poetry, Trapeze and The Wind Blows Through the Doors of My Heart (published posthumously) are particularly breathtakingly beautiful and risky. The last line in “Poem Ending with a Line by Deborah Digges” is from her poem, “Lilacs” in Trapeze.

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