‘The folded wing’ by John Freeman

I want to share a poem I heard this morning in the 2 June 2020 episode of the Shakespeare and Company podcast, ‘John Freeman reading from The Park’.

John is the writer-in-residence at New York University, and read from his book of poetry, The Park, inspired by the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris.

Before reading the final poem, ‘The folded wing’, he talked about social isolation and how it’s difficult for many people who are not able to touch one another, but how he was reminded, in observing a duck on the pond, we have ourselves to turn to. He says:

‘our bodies are not just containers for pain, but they are made to comfort us in some ways; they have that capacity within them if we can somehow reach for it some days.’

Here is the poem:

The folded wing

The lone duck in Medici fountain slips her beak beneath the wing and falls asleep, drifting like a hat tossed into a green pond.

How good it feels to be one’s own comfort, to discover all the warmth we need buried in our bodies.

Yes, we bleed, we are broken, we get just one body, yet there it lies, most of the time calling to us, saying, ‘rest here, lie down in me. I am more than less than you, even in a world that treats us as two’.