Poetry

The Griffin

For George Herbert, the rational and the emotional
  were not separate spheres. Thinking meant feeling;
a sermon on the complexities of predestination

was as exciting as a country girl sitting in the front pew.
  I learned this lesson best years ago
from a tutor in England who met with me each Tuesday.

Her last name was Griffin, which was, I thought,
  the most interesting thing about her.I'd imagine her
with a beak and talons, lion's claws and tail,

screeching through the streets of Oxford
  in her search for a good kidney pie.
But our meetings were dismal for both of us:

I thought rhymed poetry was a yawn
  and she kept squinting toward the tiny desk clock
for the minute she could be alone again. One afternoon,

after several like this, she must have decided
  that reading aloud could help. She cleared her throat,
adjusted her giant glasses, opened to ."The Collar,"

and read. With her Cornish lilt, she lingered
  over Shall I ever sigh and pine? as if it were
her own question, and by the time she got to

Is the year only lost to me? she seemed to have forgotten
  Herbert, and me, altogether. I saw a struggle in her,
heard a tightening in her throat, then a gasp

after she uttered the final words, and then
  she nearly left the prison of her body, her tears
revealing that she really was part lion, part eagle.

Years later, a friend would tell me that writing a poem
  about reading is a fool's errand, worse than taking
a snapshot of a photograph, but how often

have I read Herbert's poem in the years since,
  only to hear the unexplained weeping, and the choler
that bound the griffin, even as she flexed her wings.

(from The Lessons [Eugene, OR: Silverfish Review Press, 2011]).