In Their Own Words
Megan Pinto on “Harvest”
Harvest
All summer, I prayed
for clarity of sight—light falling
through leaves, a flock of starlings
before rain. . .
Of the psychic, who counseled
repeatedly, that I must become familiar
with love, so as to see its opposite
when it rushed toward me,
those fragments, its song,
linger, rising up, now
and again.
I was to let pain
drain from me like earth,
after rain.
O, obsession, that closed fist.
(Though, here again is mist,
rising off the water just
after dawn…)
Now, Autumn comes early. August leaves
brown in heat. Detritus from the maple
covers the street where
a pearled wasps’ nest glistens
with dew, while wasps drift
hazily in and out.
Like those figures, which cloud the edge
of memory, dissolving each time
in a kind of rain.
How should love feel, when we
receive it?
I think of those late summer walks
through the meadow and the neighboring
meadow, where I
was not longing but the one
who was longed for.
Reprinted from Saints of Little Faith (Four Way Books, 2024) with the permission of the author. The poem was originally published in the Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB Quarterly #37 Fire). All rights reserved.
On “Harvest”
“Harvest” is one of the last poems I wrote for Saints of Little Faith. So much of my book exists in various states of crisis that I spent my 20s trying to understand. Many of those poems were difficult to write, and I would spend many months, sometimes years, writing and re-writing those drafts. But “Harvest” came easily. Four Way had accepted my book, and I had a luxurious stretch of time in which to make my own edits, before handing it off to my editor (the brilliant Hannah Matheson) to review. Additionally, I had just returned from Bread Loaf, where my workshop fellow, Shara Lessley, pointed out that while my book is full of crises, I am a joyful person. She invited me to write new poems that could bring some balance to the book.
At the time, I was beginning to feel hopeful. I had lots of therapy under my belt, and was starting to find new ways to move through my day with ease and relate to my thoughts. With "Harvest," I wanted to write a poem about hope. About friendship and budding romance and my earnest, die-hard romantic sensibility. I wanted to make meaning of my lighter, warmer feelings, to balance out all of the blue-gray skies that dictate my book’s weather.
Like many poets, I collect language whenever it comes to me. Fragments of lines, images. I write them all down. This poem arose out of my notebook fragments from July - September 2022. In July I had spoken to a psychic, who I had asked, pleadingly, if I would ever find real romantic love. I wanted to be loved so badly it hurt.
The psychic counseled me to turn my attention away from cold, and towards warmth. Who were the kind, loving people in my life? Could I go one step closer toward them? Could I notice when I wanted to pull away, back toward my own darkness and compulsions? Could I instead pause, in the stillness of that one moment? Pause, instead of letting my compulsion toward pain automatically run its course?
In wanting to find romantic love, I found myself turning toward that great and ever present teacher: friendship. It is friendship that taught me how to move toward healthy romantic love. Friendship that taught me to recognize warmth and move toward it. I’ve lost count of the many lakes I have circled, arm in arm with a friend, the many meadows we have crossed...
