Separately Together - Wade in the Water

“Is it strange to say that love is a language/ few practice, but all, or near all speak?”

Wade in the Water opens with the poem "Garden of Eden," and thus we descend and enter Smith's train of thought as she voices a great longing for her version of the Garden of Eden: Montague. We watch on as a 30 year old resident trails in and out of shops, balancing a handbasket in the bustling streets of New York. The rest of the collection of poems take us on a tour of a sphere of existence that expands to include individual (Smith's mother's dying moments) and universal instants (state to global spread of PFOA). We are made to feel the distinct sense of despair that accompanies isolation (take a father who grapples with the sacrifice of his son for a greater cause; himself alone and without emotional or physical comfort). We are also made to feel the distinct sense of hope and purpose that companionship bestows (take the shared moment between two strangers at dawn). Companionship here does not assume longevity in regards to interactions. Smith shows us that even instants, momentary interactions, suffice in bridging the gaps that exist between us. Letters from African American Civil War soldiers work to bridge the gap that spans time and space, a symbolic raise of the arm work to bridge the gap between two mowers, the words "I love you" from a member of the Geechee Gullah Ring Shouters worked to bridge a gap between a performer and a spectator, a stranger. 

 

We share this stage of life. We are sometimes fortunate enough to share moments, words, and, if we're lucky, even love. Now as I step back from this book mentally, I find that a bird's eye view displays this stage of life as not one but many, a multitude of scattered stages potentially interconnected by existing interactions. I say potentially because the reality of our existence(s) is now almost equally defined by a duality of separateness and togetherness. We are left to wonder with Smith the cost that we evade in such moments when we hesitate or refrain from bridging the gap that divides us from one another. 

"To say what I feared I'd never 

Adequately said, voice choked, 

Stalled, hearing the silence spread

Around us like weather. What 

Would it cost me to say it now, 

To a stranger's father, walking home 

To our separate lives together?