I wish her safe passage

In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her safe passage.

– Richard Wilbur, The Writer (excerpt)

I heard this for the first time at my niece‘s christening celebration many years ago. And now I have a daughter who wants to be a writer and who is finding some of the stuff of her life to be heavy. Oh, life. I heard this for the first time at my niece’s christening celebration many years ago. I still love it.

I am taking next week off to spend with the children because they are on break. I’ll be back on the 23rd! Maybe, then, most of the snow will have melted. A girl can dream.

9 thoughts on “I wish her safe passage”

Oh, Lindsey, this is gorgeous and wrenching, as a woman who was once a girl writer and now a grown up one with a budding artist/writer daughter of my own… Your daughter is truly blessed (and I don’t throw that word around loosely) to have a wise writing mother to help shed light on her journey.