During the spring/summer of 1983, Columbia Journal published Linda Gregg’s poem “At the Gate in the Middle of My Life” in its eighth issue. An award-winning American poet, Gregg often explored loss, struggle, and nature in her writing. In this poem from our archive, she demonstrates her close inspection of what it means to be at the entrance of one’s midlife or the central period of one’s years.
The speaker becoming bare—taking shoes and a jacket off—with their “face emerging into clear light” suggests a surrender of the past, while intertwining with the new, after a departure of what is now gone. At once instilled with poignancy and tints of hope, Gregg’s poem investigates wistful could-have-beens and uncertain possibilities in a life that is as open as a dance. She breathes energy into a transition of shedding even as the movement of life carries forward, whether through natural tears or the earth’s surroundings. The repetitive symmetry of “three” at the end invokes a cyclical power in nature and life. Perhaps what is to be understood with age cannot be explained, so much as the poet’s own controlled language merely dances with us. When the speaker leaves things unsaid with room for vivid emotion, Gregg’s plainspoken language all the more invites a sense of beckoning what is to come.
As we read this at the end of 2021, the poem remains timeless. We might come to perceive being at the gate of a new year to be likewise full of expectancy, relinquishing, and renewal. Even if, as Gregg notes, “the wind is going the wrong way”—or to interpret this as going against the wind or a conventional direction—there could be much that embraces us and, consequently, much for us to embrace back.
At the Gate in the Middle of My Life
Linda Gregg
I had come prepared to answer questions,
because it said there would be questions.
I could have danced or sung. Could have loved.
But I wanted intelligence. Now it asks
what can be understood but not explained
and I have nothing with me. I take off
my shoes and say this is a plate of food.
I say the wind is going the wrong way.
Say here is my face emerging into clear light
that misses the sea we departed from to join you.
Take off my jacket and say this is a goat alone.
It embraces me, weeping human tears. Dances
sadly three times around. Then three times more.
