Poem o'the Day: Anne Sexton, 'A Story for Rose...'

So I missed a day. Maybe you'll have two tomorrow. Sure, this whole thing is a bit of a dumb idea, but at least it will keep me blogging regularly during the busy semester, not to mention I can use it to double as both blogging and 'research' inasmuch as I'll hopefully post at least a few thoughts about each poem. Like I said, expect Sexton for a while (though I've got an inkling that Yeats and Maxine Kumin may appear this week).

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"A Story for Rose On the Midnight Flight to Boston"
Anne Sexton

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.