“I came here to be a poet …”
I like how Stevie Nicks speaks like a Martian sometimes.
“I came here for a reason,” she said in a 1983 interview.
As if simply relaying the directive from her mothership.
“I didn’t come here to be a mother …” Bet that sounded
pretty alien then. Coming from a young pretty woman.
Like a Trojan horse. Feminism disguised in a frilly dress.
It makes me think about my birth mother. Like Stevie,
she didn’t come here to be a mother. Unlike my mother,
who couldn’t get pregnant but wouldn’t let that stop her
from becoming what she came here to be. My mother,
as passionate about adoption as she was about choice.
I like how that confuses some—those who like to point
out that abortion might’ve prevented her from adopting.
I suppose those dimwits came here to be … well, dimwits.
Still, bet they can’t help but hum along when they hear
Stevie Nicks songs. Failing to realize that all those songs
are her children. That she gave birth to them for us.
“Because,” she said. “I want to enhance this planet.”
Copyright © 2026 by Michael Montlack. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 17, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.
“I suppose this poem is about soul contracts. Too often we are steered into doing what is expected [of us] instead of what we are meant to do. Or what is right for us. I was lucky to have been adopted by parents determined to be parents and just as lucky to have been given up by people who knew parenting was not for them. I admire both decisions. And [I] admire how Stevie Nicks expresses so blatantly and unapologetically her own mission, which is to bring her songs (her children) to this planet. How lucky we all are for that.”
—Michael Montlack
Michael Montlack
