What Is Given
Wet Cement Press, 2025
Walking
The sky, a mottled grey.
Cold, light rain, and it seemed
later than it was, almost dark.
The blossoms—redbud,
dogwood, ragwort—
brighter by contrast,
brighter than when bathed
in morning light.
For the first time that day,
I paused,
breathed the ozone,
green growing things,
and in that moment,
I was no longer
over living.
I walked on in a fog, unsure
where I was going,
one foot in front of the other until
I’d almost come full circle,
then came a break
in the clouds.
Behind me,
yet I could see
everything illuminated
and turned around
to glimpse the sun
sending down shafts
like a ladder out
just before setting.
Hikmet wrote: we must live
as if we will never die. Too,
we must do whatever it is
that makes us not want to.
- from What Is Given, Wet Cement Press, 2025
"
“In poems acutely aware of loss, Washburn comes back to the redeeming beauty of the sensual world. These are poems infused with love and a profound trust in, as she titles one of her poems, “the radical hospitality of the senses.” With poetry that reminds us to be grateful for what is given, Washburn establishes herself as a necessary poet for our difficult times."
--Ed Falco, author of X in the Tickseed and recipient of the Robert Penn Warren Prize in Poetry
"Part daybook on living a meaningful life, part phenomenological treatise, What is Given is a sort of field guide to the interior. Again and again, we are brought to places and difficulties and moments of grace, and each time, a wise guide directs our eye, shows us what lies underneath, and offers a way forward."
--Sebastian Matthews, author of the memoir In My Father’s Footsteps (W.W. Norton & Co.), and the poetry collections We Generous, Miracle Day, and Beginner’s Guide to a Head-on Collision (Red Hen Press)
"Washburn’s elegant syntax, humane imagination, and inimitable intellect, reveal what ultimately prevails: her unstinting commitment to life, to astonishment, and to pleasure: “no one thinking yet / about how we would find our way / home, or what this fruit was called, / just taking it in, tasting it, letting / the sweet red break on our tongues.”
-–Holly Wren Spaulding, Director of Poetry Forge and author of Familiars
“[Washburn’s] voice instructs us to notice our surroundings and praise life in all its manifested forms, especially when the conditions for happiness are elusive. And so, what’s given is an examination of cherished rituals consecrating domestic commitments that nourish and sustain daily living.”
–-Mildred Kiconco Barya, The Animals of My Earth School