Spring Break
Susan McLean

What did I do for spring break? Broke my ankle.
It’s not the kind of break I had in mind.
Although six weeks of pained dependence rankle,
sometimes I need to be knocked down to find
what really holds me up: the friends who take
me back to work and clinics, who obtain
a wheelchair for me, who are glad to make
a six-hour drive to help me catch a plane.
And when I found how hard it was to wheel
up ramps, or sat with students eye to eye,
not standing over them, I winced to feel
I should have known this sooner. I won’t lie:
I longed to drive and walk, to be intact.
But often we grow stronger where we cracked.

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Susan’s notes: “I wrote this sonnet in the spring of 2018, when I first broke my ankle. Just recently, I broke an ankle again, for the third time, and I realized that I have to keep relearning the same lessons of humility and gratitude. Each time it comes as a surprise to see how kind people can be, even to those they don’t know. I was teaching English in Minnesota when I first broke my ankle. I’m now retired and living in Iowa. Yet recent events in Minnesota, in which strangers came together to help one another and to try to protect the most vulnerable, protesting outdoors in the depths of the Minnesota winter, reminded me of all the best parts of the human spirit. This poem was first published in The Healing Muse, a literary journal focused on themes of medicine, illness, disability, and healing.”

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Susan McLean is a retired English professor from Southwest Minnesota State University. She has published two poetry collections, The Best Disguise and The Whetstone Misses the Knife, and one book of translations of Latin poems by Martial, Selected Epigrams. Her third poetry book, Daylight Losing Time, is forthcoming from Able Muse Press.

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Spring Break Susan McLean

Spring Break
Susan McLean