Just in case it doesn't work out this time... One of my favorite poems by Richard Wilber. I was reminded of it reading the War Poetry thread.... Hang in there and best wishes!
The Writer, by Richard Wilbur.
In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linder,
My daughter is writing a story.
I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.
Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.
But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which
The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.
I remember the dazed starling
which was trapped in that very room, two years ago,
How we stole in, lifted a sash
And retreated, not to affright it:
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark
And irridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the har floor, or the desktop,
And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again: and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,
It lifted off from a chair-back,
Beating a smooth course for the night window
And clearing the sill of the world.
It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.
