"Miracle Ice Cream"

"Miracle Ice Cream"
Miracle's truck comes down the little avenue,
Scott Joplin ragtime strewn behind it like pearls,
and, yes, you can feel happy
with one piece of your heart.

Take what's still given: in a room's rich shadow
a woman's breasts swinging lightly as she bends.
Early now the pearl of dusk dissolves.
Late, you sit weighing the evening news,
fast-food miracles, ghostly revolutions,
the rest of your heart.

~ Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich was born in 1929 in Baltimore, Maryland. She attended Radcliffe College where she was chosen for W.H Auden for the

Yale Series of Young Poets Prize. She married and had three sons. She divorced her husband and he committed suicide a year later.

This change in her life paralleled the change in her writing. Before she had been described by Randall Jarrell as seeming like a princess

in a fairy princess. Later her poetry was based on controversial issues such as racism, the Vietnam War, and the role of women in society.

This poem has to do with finding a moment of happiness in a time when the news is filled with horrifying and depressing stories.

The ice cream truck that is coming down the street is one of those moment, and is symbolic of all of the small things in life that can

provide a moment of peace. This is the "miracle" that the ice cream is making. When a person is eating ice cream, they are often only

worried about what it tastes like and not dripping it everywhere.