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Poems

December 2002

Teaching poetry at the school for the blind

by Chelsea Rathburn

Their struggle to meet the image in the dark
is one we know—the storms, the hesitation—
but the shifting bridge they walk between idea
and braille’s brief physical translation

reveals the sometimes lightness of our thoughts,
our casual groping for a better word,
as easy, slight as calling to our love
or remembering the chorus of a song we heard.


Chelsea Rathburn was a finalist for the 2000 Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award
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This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 21 December 2002, on page 47
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