Noting

Nosing about
in the bedroom
and closet clutter,
I find myself scattered
across so many
scraps of paper:
a list, an old music sheet,
an alarming ramble
across a lined page.
In a box, college papers
I can't quite bring myself
to ditch, smell
of blue-penned library nights
in a room with many windows.

I think of the woman dead,
lying by a pile of wrapped gifts
and a television, on,
for nearly three years
before anybody noticed--
and feel, vaguely,
that a life belongs somewhere
other than on paper.
Or, if on paper,
ought always to be going
from one hot, sticky fist to the next.
Perhaps, there is still something
to be said for lonely notations.
One can suspend  them at arm's length
and uncross the eyes.

Poets and Poetry

I have impressions of poets (and their kin) circling my brain tonight: Denise Levertov's Caedmon, called from his loneliness into the surprise of words and belonging; Jane Kenyon and Sylvia Plath, who both felt depression, both married fellow poets, yet sang quite different songs; and Richard Wilbur's mother-in-law, Edna Ward, who was not a poet, and who died with "the thin hand reaching out, the last word love." I am tired, have a weekend trip starting tomorrow, and am (unfortunately) no student of these poets, anyway, so I'm not going to say anything profound about them. Still, as one of their very little poet sisters, I am fascinated by their examples of what we do with our poetry and our lives.

In his poem "Cottage Street, 1953," Wilbur describes a moment of Edna Ward's hospitality. Though what we see of her life seems common place enough, she lives 88 years of "grace and courage." Her guest Sylvia Plath's tortured life stands in stark contrast within the poem. Plath (who ultimately took her own life) is "condemned to live" for now. She "Shall study a decade, as she must, / To state at last her brilliant negative / In poems free and helpless and unjust" (lines 26-28).  This characterization of her work haunts me. How terrible for one's life work to embody a "brilliant negative." (As a side note: I don't know how fair Wilbur's judgment of Plath is, and I feel empathy for her suffering and sadness that she lost her battle--one that I know is brutal.)

I don't want to state any "brilliant negative." Nor do I want to stand aside from humanity in general. Some conventional knowledge paints artistic types as extreme individualists, a bit at odds with ordinary folk. Poets can be observers and recorders of the outer world or cartographers of the self. But what I'd like for myself and my poetic endeavors, is to bring a kind of hospitality in the midst of fractured life. I'd like the general effect to be some kind of knitting together. (That was a horrible, vague sentence, but it's too late at night for a manifesto.) If I had to choose between a life of loving engagement with others and the ability to create poems, I hope I would choose the former. But surely poems themselves can be a thin hand reaching out and words whispering love, love in a thousand sharp or subtle ways.

Dry Times

Sometimes
the word stream sinks
to a trickle over tan stones,
leaving an emptiness,
high as a man's shoulder,
where water once cut a path,
rinsed soil from tree roots
as meticulously as any
archeologist's brush.
The roots elbow
from the brown bank
into the emptiness--
silent, living sculptures woven
from years and shade
to uphold the emerald
skin of the world
and to guard the chasm's
white lightening wink
where sunshine still finds
the water.

unpoem

Supposedly, writing
is the perfect pursuit,
because one can recycle
failure, as easily as triumph,
into something greater
than itself.
  "You can write about anything,
even having nothing to write about,"
the textbook urged.
But consider the sounds
the world already
has too much of.
Despair,
self-pity,
inertia,
are all well and good
in passing
on the way
up and out,
but very nasty
places to dwell,
and one hesitates
to unleash them
on the teetering world.
Or is it--more truthfully--
that one hesitates
to catch her reflection
in the glass
of her own
words?

Before the Downbeat

I told myself,
"Write three lines,"
and am trying.

Just three lines,
but my orchestra
is endlessly tuning
(at least, I hope that's the sense of this cacophony),
the strings stretching and easing in refined torture,
the teeth-on-edge to almost-perfect
slide in a hurry before the conductor

lifts his baton

and confusion
straggles off, trailing
a few frayed threads.

Something has been torn away,
and in its place--
silence as taut
as any tuned string
awaiting
the song.

Ready To Try

I sit in my living room, boxes of Christmas decorations at my feet and the despoiled tree at my elbow. Outside, a freezing drizzle falls in the twilight. Inside, dishes call for washing, laundry for folding, and floors for attention. I have ample stock of reasons not to write: my stomach hurts, my life is a mess, ect. For about a week now, I've known I should write of the glimpses of God's loved graciously sprinkled through these days--days of mediocrity and the most ignominious kind of failure, the failure to try. The glimpses still come, the gentle answers to this season's prayer: "Lord, teach me to give and receive love well." Part of me wants to clean up my life, or at least my living room, before looking for words to express God's gifts. But in waiting, I begin to forget, to rationalize, and to listen attentively to the accusing voices in my head: you've lost your chance, He doesn't really love you like that, those were nice psychological warm fuzzies. His kindness found me in the midst of this mess. Perhaps it is not so unseemly to write it here.

This Is Why You Should Turn Up The Heat

My toes throb. The chill seeps through bricks where the coffee house wall stretches past my elbow. Frost climbs the big windows in front, and the life has left my coffee mug. Should have chosen decaff, the tremor in my pinky finger insists. Hoping to write a poem, but feeling doubtful, I glance around the room. A girl sitting at the counter still wears her coat--navy with a ruff of fir around the hood. The establishment must be trying to save on the heat bill (drat, another "to be" verb!). This chill seems opposed to poetry, more suited to editing.

Faulty Sonnet

My Father, You have said, "Do not give up.
Do not get tired of doing what is right,"
and urged, "Do not surrender to fear's might."
I'm both: afraid and weary of this cup.
Existence wearies me: the sure slip up;
the trying, trying failure to do right;
that always hunger after moral height
when I am just a dust and spit hiccup.

Both life and poems ought to sing of love.
Abomination, sonnets to despair!
Man cannot live by words that are his own.
So Father, give these thoughts of mine a shove,
this earthen jar in kindness now repair,
and fill my form with beauty from Your throne.

When I Can't Make Sense

I used to be (yesterday, or the day before) convinced that we write to make sense of the world--even if that means expressing one's view that it's all senseless. Today, I wonder.Very little makes sense to me right now--and still, I write! I want to, and I feel I must. Perhaps, this, too, is one facet of life: the doing of the next right little thing--because it matters--even if I really couldn't say just how or where.

Ethan

After the warning
and half-glimpsed needle
and broken washers,
I settled across the way
to wait for laundry
and try to write.
It was a relief, I confess,
to glimpse your pleasant face
in that unfamiliar
and vaguely alarming location.
Authors are blessed
to retain imaginary friends
even in adulthood.