Wife for Scale
by Maggie Smith
This is a tender age鈥攁nd in geologic time,
hardly an age at all. But a golden band
of rock, pressed paper-thin, will stand
for these years, a kind of scientific
shorthand. Once I had a professor
whose wife was in every photo he took
of rock formations. He鈥檇 click through
slide after slide, saying: My wife for scale.
Isn鈥檛 there always a woman in the picture
and isn鈥檛 she always small in comparison?
Forgive me: that was my grief talking.
Tell me: how do I teach myself to be alone?
The strata for this age will not be the first
to reveal what salt does to stone, as if
a sea had been here and not sadness only.
Tell me: with God a question, where
is solace but in the earth? The soil
I鈥檓 standing on in this moment鈥�
even as it shifts beneath my feet, as it gives
and cannot hold me鈥攚ill be rock.
鈥淲ife for Scale鈥� was inspired by a college geology class and the idea of rock layers representing time in Earth鈥檚 history, but the real thrust of the poem鈥攖he thing that drove me to the page鈥攚as how deeply unsettled I felt. For me, a poem usually starts with a line, an image, or a metaphor, and then鈥攊f I鈥檓 lucky鈥擨 see ways to build upon that piecemeal beginning. The title came to me from that geology class, and I remembered sitting in the back of the dark lab, watching as the professor clicked through slides, so many of which included his wife. It resonated with me at the time, as metaphor: 鈥淚sn鈥檛 there always a woman in the picture and isn鈥檛 she always small in comparison?鈥� I was mid-divorce when I wrote the poem, and I had so many questions: What does this time in my life mean? What will it 鈥渁dd up to鈥�? What might I learn about it later? What is happening that I cannot see but need to trust? The ending was not as hopeful in earlier drafts, but eventually, in revisions, I liked landing on the idea of the unstable ground beneath us becoming stable鈥攁nd not only stable, but something we can learn from.
is the author of five books, including Keep Moving, Good Bones, and a new collection of poems, Goldenrod, forthcoming from One Signal/Simon & Schuster in July 2021. Her poems and essays have appeared in The New York聽Times, POETRY, The New Yorker, the Washington Post, and The Paris Review.