Rebecca Brock on Porches, an Insistent Donkey and Upkeep 

I wrote the poem “I Am, You Are” because somebody told me to write it.

In Norwood, Virginia, a spring or two ago, I spent four days at The Porches, a writing retreat, run by the inimitable Trudy Hale. My last writing residency had been in 2005, before either of my children, now teenagers, were born. Porches is only a couple of hours from where I live in Virginia, but I trembled when I left my house, my little life, to drive there. That who-do-you-think-you-are chorus strummed through me as Google maps sent me over hill and dale and through several small hollows between mountains. I passed a small farm with a donkey, close to the road, another homestead with a big Newfoundland and, once, I even glimpsed my destination: a house whose entire front was two wide porches.  Eventually, I found my way through a latched gate that opened to a bumble of bees and their wildflowers, a brick path meant to be followed. The lower porch creaked as I stepped to open the screen door. My nervousness—about leaving my family, about what I might do with these days—shifted to calm, to purpose.

I was there to piece a poetry manuscript together and, true to its name, my room had a wide second story porch. I often took myself and my poems out there to breathe, to settle my eyes on the greening spring and let birdsong surround me. I sifted through work that ranged over years, searching for a cohesive whole. I was alone in a way I hadn’t been for a very long time and I could sense the shape and space of the hours before and behind me.

I’m telling you all of this to explain the place in this poem. It’s tangible, yes, it can be found on a map. But for me, at that time and instance of my life, it was a turn and return. To myself, maybe, to writing, certainly.

One afternoon, my old marked up poems on my lap, I’d just started to feel some small pride in what I’d managed to collate, when the donkey interrupted the entire valley with his bray: brass, brutal, loud. The sound over those low hills was startling—not so much echo as amplification. Think of how a she-fox screams in the night. That first reckoning doesn’t change, even if, right away, someone tells you, or you realize, it’s a fox. Similarly, I knew, eventually, I was hearing a donkey—but I’d never quite imagined such a sound.

I began looking forward to hearing the donkey throughout the days. I admired his boldness, his is-ness, his certainty, out loud to the other writers staying there, even to Trudy, who said, on my last night at Porches, “I think you need to write about that donkey.” I laughed. But I woke early that last morning and wrote my first draft.

The deep secret in this poem? Anita Darcel Taylor, a brilliant writer and beloved friend I hadn’t seen in person for nearly two decades, was also staying at Porches. She delightfully hosted me in her studio, separate from the house, for tea and catching up. I knew she hadn’t been well, but I hadn’t realized the extent of her condition—how her heart was the very thing she couldn’t trust to keep her here. Writing in the early and late hours, I loved thinking of her, just across the way, writing her own way through—and that heart of hers doing its “own work…of insistence and upkeep.”