Ways to Reappear

 

image via Unsplash

Ways to Reappear

In the dawn

Down a path

Through tall pines

Come to

With a grin

In a flash

Down to earth

In a spotlight

In a shadow

Without a plan

Without speaking

On your porch

On your threshold

In the garden

In the pool

In a library

In the corner

In the background

Come out

On a limb

At a moment's notice

In envelopes

In secret

Without words

Without a doubt

Seeking identity

Through dense fog

Down this path

In the dawn

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2021 

after Ways to Disappear by Camille Rankine

"Ways to Disappear" was the Poem a Day from Poets.org on Wednesday, June 2. Camille Rankine writes about her poem: “There are so many ways a person can become not a person in someone else’s eyes. They can be erased through violence of gaze or word or action, by the individual, by the media, by the state, so that their humanity dissolves into nothing in the other’s view, and they vanish. In plain sight, and not there at all.”

Big truth in these times, in this country.

I began to think of possible ways for a person to reappear. If we can erase a person, surely we can also work against that erasure, really see those around us, and make sure they know they've been seen.

The poem is also about losing one identity and reappearing with a new identity. 

Process notes: I found the photo on Unsplash after I wrote the poem. It was a little eerie how well the image matched my words. 

I borrowed the first word in every line from Rankine's poem. Lots of times I used the first two words. To give the poem a more optimistic feel, I changed "gone" to "come." The lines are specific and personal but at the same time broad and general. As in Rankine's poem, the lines sometimes seem connected, but mostly can stand alone. The word "seeking" stood out to me as a turning point, and from there I diverged from Rankine's poem, reversing the pattern of the first three lines, and ending where the poem started.