Thank you to everyone who joined for this session!

For this session we close-read the poem Soulwork by Tracy K. Smith, posted below.

Our prompt for this session was: “One’s is…”

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Soulwork by Tracy K. Smith

One’s is to feed. One’s is to cleave.
One’s to be doubled over under greed.
One’s is strife. One’s to be strangled by life.
One’s to be called and to rise.
One’s to stare fire in the eye.
One’s is bondage to pleasure.
One’s to be held captive by power.
One’s to drive a nation to its naked knees
in war. One’s is the rapture of stolen hours.
One’s to be called yet cower.
One’s is to defend the dead.
One’s to suffer until ego is shed.
One’s is to dribble the nectar of evil.
One’s but to roll a stone up a hill.
One’s to crouch low
over damp kindling in deep snow
coaxing the thin plume
of cautious smoke.
One’s is only to shiver.
One’s is only to blow.



Copyright © 2021 by Tracy K. Smith. 
Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 8, 2021, 
by the Academy of American Poets.