It’s hard to figure out what the inspiration for the poem she posted today. Perhaps it was a recognition of how her family came together in her time of need. Other than that, the poem seems to have risen above the conflicts of the last few months to look back at her heritage.
Roughly translated as “Crossing Over,” the title symbolizes a number of aspects of character, of moving on while holding onto important elements of the past.
The poet looks out over the landscape at sunrise and the New York City skyline visible from her building, and it is for her a time of reflection and peace, something private, something she finds only at this moment during the day when ordinary life stirs around her, the bakeries putting on their product on the shelves, old women hanging their laundry onto window sills (an image of almost every immigrant community in every urban area dating back to after the American Civil War).
She envisions herself going back into time, walking those cobblestone streets, looking around at the women as they lean out their windows, each an image of her own ancestry.
There is comfort in the fact that she is part of this community, too, generations past walking beside her.
And though she has to return to her own reality – which saddens her, she says, she understands that this community is always with her, and she can return to it each time at sunrise and know they will be there waiting.
This idea of belonging to a culture and to be part of a community that stretches out through time is central to the title – not just a crossing over from her time to their time, but also a crossing over from another place, part of the immigrant experience that has seen people like these making the arduous trek from the old world to the new, yet carrying with them old world traditions which the poem revisits when she wants at each dawn.
She is not alone, as she points out, she carries this with her much in the same way those ancestors carried their culture here from where they started.
This is an amazingly peaceful poem, tender, coming at a time when the poet is coming down off an extremely emotional roller coaster, and is seeking the comfort of her community and finds it.
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