TO WRITE A THOUSAND POEMS, TO WRITE EVEN ONE

Photo by: Innis Casey

I write a poem on the floor of my bedroom.

There is a portable stereo on the shelf above my head.

I call it a jam box + I listen to Carol King’s Tapestry album on repeat.

The poem is about life + what it all means.

By the end of the last verse,

I believe I have figured something out.

I write a poem at my friend’s house after a moment at the dinner table

When I ask her dad about the time he served in Vietnam –

He lovingly smiles a little in my direction

And then says

nothing.

The poem is about soldiers + family + the silence of a person’s pain.

By the end of the last verse,

I can feel all of the things I don’t understand about war packed into the white space beyond the margins -

Which is everything.

I write a poem on the roof outside of my high school bedroom.

I climb out of the dormer window with a pen + journal + one Camel Light cigarette.

The poem is about girls being called sluts + boys being called…boys.

By the end of the last verse,

I know I have named something we don’t talk about enough.

I write a poem on a blanket tossed across alumni lawn.

I have met him + everything has changed.

My choices filter through the attention he doesn’t give me.

The poem is about the wanting.

By the end of the last verse,

I can see that even in my desire, I question if I would really want what comes with getting what I want.

Sometimes, this is how the wanting goes.

I write a poem in the fading sunlight that hits the Ponte Vecchio.

I let the drops of gelato dry on the sketch of the bridge that I’ve made in my journal.

The poem is about culture + art + food + the way the world turns differently in Italy.

By the end of the last verse,

I’ve turned to face the parts of me that have been revealed in leaving home.

I am still familiar and I am also, different.

I write a poem on a cocktail napkin waiting for him to break down the stage + load the van.

Where there was revelry + dance is now an empty bar room that smells of piss + beer.

This poem is about the waiting - the space after adolescence + before adulthood.

I will not live this part on-the-road, corner stools + sound checks, comings + goings + piecing rent together – fueled on french fries + bonded by bandmates’ inside jokes.

By the end of the last verse, I know we must go our separate ways.

When I tell him, he knows we will meet again. I am not so sure.

But poems are not for the future – they are for now.

This is the only moment I can know.

I write a poem on a bench in Tiburon overlooking the San Francisco Bay.

I am reading Gone with the Wind + dreaming of all the stories I will write about the South before I turn 30 years old.

The cloud cover rolls past + the sun is glory.

The heat of my hope fills me with a warmth I can’t always feel in this city.

By the end of the last verse, I am cold again + I understand a little better how hard it is to soften + surrender into something that is ultimately temporary –

Which is everything.

I write a poem sitting on the subway moving downtown.

I write about writing + wonder if I will ever be able to call myself a writer –

Or if that really matters.

I help the woman next to me with her bag so she can get a good grip on her toddler’s hand + position the stroller that carries her sleeping baby towards the door before it slides open.

There is no last verse because I leave the poem for the mother. I do not return.

Here begins my relationship with the unfinished – and no feeling makes me feel more like a writer than that one.

I write a poem in a park of pine trees – the splendor of their height + straight shooting beauty point me to a vision of the future.

A life of seasons – the truth that my time in Georgia confirms.

The poem is about my commitment. We will be together.

We will grow like trees.

It won’t always be a perfect autumn day – honestly, it’s already been a storm.

But there’s a root system here and by the end of the last verse,

I know we are already each other’s shared history.

I write a poem with my feet in the sand on a quiet day in Malibu.

The names of my unborn children float gently in my heart the way the waves roll ashore, a sound so soothing, I eventually fall asleep.

I dream of screenplays and book tours and helping people and teaching and sharing wisdom that I’m not even sure I will ever have – there are nonsensical images along an unclear timeline.

It is too much all at once and still, I dream it all.

When I wake to the sun dropping into the horizon, it is so beautiful.

It looks like anything is possible.

I revisit the poem that started with an energetic ambition for a big future.

I make my way to the last verse,

and find a calm ground in the small truth that what I want the most is family.

I write poems. I write them on airplanes and in bathtubs.

I write them in the grocery store, where I stop in front of the strawberry jelly and take the mini spiral notebook from my purse.

I write them at concerts. I write them in classrooms and in boardrooms and sitting on the steps outside of my friend’s apartment in Brooklyn.

I write them alone. I write them surrounded by people. I write them even when my pen is not moving.

I read other people’s poetry and bow in awe.

When it flows, it seems so easy. Effortless expression.

Though I know, it comes from a lifetime of devotion.

I am best at the unfinished.

I am a master of scraps – I have the proof. Thousands of words scribbled in the back covers of the books I keep. Words on receipts and valet stubs and playbills and ripped papers with pieces of what I think could turn into something meaningful if I had more time – if I had another lifetime.

I used to fantasize about collecting the fragments – each and every one of them –like I was saving them from their own incompletion. Uploading them to a hard drive. Properly filing them to my computer, bringing them home.

I don’t dream of that anymore. If there were a fire in my house, I wouldn’t lunge for the notebooks in my office closet. Let it burn.

All these words, so many words. Years of naming, claiming, exploring, wondering. The search for it.

Playing in metaphor, longing for a more insightful way to say it – better phrasing, more courage. The quest for perfect originality. The pang of the moment I read it back and think it just falls –

short.

The peace of the moment I accept it –

released and true.  Free to be just what it is.

I know nothing of poetry. I’ve learned so much.

I’ve learned this one thing:

We write poems with our attention.

We break lines with our breath.

I think – maybe – I’ve written thousands of poems

but also – maybe – I’ve written none.

The closest I’ve come to being an artist is to decide that the very life of us is the most exquisite poetry of all.

Photo credit:  Innis Casey