National Poetry Month continues on the blog today with a poem that reminds one how poetry can be simultaneously timeless and timely. In "Mimesis," Palestinian American poet and physician Fady Joudah uses his words simply and directly to convey the quiet of a continuous moment, his daughter's careful contemplation of the life of another creature infusing his work. The question she leaves us with in her father's poetry? It speaks to the experience of being a refugee across thousands of years of human history, it speaks nine years into the future from Joudah's writing, when million of Ukranian refugees seek help elsewhere, and it speaks to the interconnectedness of all things.
Mimesis
My daughter
wouldn’t hurt a spider
That had nested
Between her bicycle handles
For two weeks
She waited
Until it left of its own accord
If you tear down the web I said
It will simply know
This isn’t a place to call home
And you’d get to go biking
She said that’s how others
Become refugees isn’t it?
- Fady Joudah
From Alight