Hello and welcome to The Daily Poem. I'm Heidi White and today is Monday, May 17th.

Today's going to be a very special episode of the Daily Poem for me and probably an emotional one

because today marks four days since the death of my mother. She died early in the morning on Thursday,

May 13th. It was a good death.

She was surrounded by family and love and memory and prayer. But it was, of course, a watershed

experience in my life. And of course, in those moments, many of us turn to poetry, and I certainly did.

And so today I'm going to read for you a poem by American poet Natasha Trethaway.

She was born in 1966, and she's still living today.

She spent two terms as the U.S. Poet Laureate.

She's also a Pulitzer Prize winner, and she won the 2017 Heinz Award.

She has written four collections of poetry, one book of nonfiction, and she held the position of

Poet Laureate of Mississippi from 2012 to 2016. And she's a distinguished and widely read American poet.

And one thing that the two of us share is that we've both lost our mothers.

She lost her mom in college and she writes many of her poems exploring that experience in her life.

So today's poem is called What the Body Can Say, and this is how it goes.

Even in stone, the gesture is unmistakable.

The man upright, though on his knees, spine arched, head flung back.

And covering his eyes, his fingers spread across his face i think grief and since he's

here in the courtyard of the divinity school what he might ask of god how easy it is to read this body's language

are those gestures we've come to know.

The raised thumb that is both a symbol of agreement and the request for a ride.

The two fingers held up that once meant victory, then peace.

...