There Is No One Story and One Story Only - Adrienne Rich

[Larry Robinson]

There Is No One Story and One Story Only

The engineer’s story of hauling coal
to Davenport for the cement factory, sitting on the bluffs   
between runs looking for whales, hauling concrete
back to Gilroy, he and his wife renewing vows   
in the glass chapel in Arkansas after 25 years   
The flight attendant’s story murmured   
to the flight steward in the dark galley   
of her fifth-month loss of nerve
about carrying the baby she’d seen on the screen   
The story of the forensic medical team’s   
small plane landing on an Alaska icefield   
of the body in the bag they had to drag   
over the ice like the whole life of that body   
The story of the man driving
600 miles to be with a friend in another country seeming   
easy when leaving but afterward
writing in a letter difficult truths
Of the friend watching him leave remembering   
the story of her body
with his once and the stories of their children
made with other people and how his mind went on   
pressing hers like a body
There is the story of the mind’s
temperature neither cold nor celibate   
Ardent    
The story of
not one thing only.

	- Adrienne Rich