In My Copious Free Time

Poetry, OBX Style

Billy Collins says it best in "The Trouble With Poetry"...

Poetry fills me with joy
and I rise like a feather in the wind.
Poetry fills me with sorrow
and I sink like a chain flung from a bridge.

.........

But mostly poetry fills me
with the urge to write poetry,
to sit in the dark and wait for a little flame
to appear at the tip of my pencil.

I make no claims to being a great poet, or even a particularly good one. But I have enough of the urge in me and enough time putting pencil to paper (or these days, fingertips to keyboard) that I do consider myself a poet. I've written things that others have been moved by...and that I have moved myself to a new place with. And I figure that is cause enough to think of myself as a poet.

But look...I'm procrastinating, and avoiding procrastination was the whole point of this post. I haven't written any poetry in well over a year. And the last thing I wrote was pretty darned good, but somber, deeply personal, and directly related to the turmoil I was in and am now free of. I've been feeling pulses of poems for a few weeks now, but lying in bed (not sleeping, of course) in my hotel in Singapore, I finally felt the urge--real, deep, unstoppable. It was finally right there for me to let out, after such a long and sad hiatus. 

So on the flight home, I wrote and wrote and wrote. A long journal entry, some bits of poems, letters to be sent or silently held back. I was as rusty as Billy's old chain flung from a bridge. But I kept at it, and in the middle of the writing and the middle of the night, this came to me. I barely paused as I typed, it was so fully formed coming out of me. It could certainly be improved, but something about how it was born makes me want to leave it just as it is. This was, of course, inspired by my week at the beach and the decisions I made there that have made all the difference. But I know the longer I wait, the less likely I am to post it. So here goes nothing...

Starry Night

Alone for a moment
Only the steady shush of the ocean,
The chill of the winter beach,
The inconsequential discomfort
Of the wooden walkway
Beneath me as I stretched out
Underneath a blanket of stars,
Thick and luxurious.

Too seldom in this life
Have I seen a sky like that.
It’s always been there,
As obscured by haze
As my own path had been
Until now.

But no more.
Tonight was clear
In every way,
And for a moment
I laid back,
Allowing this beautiful world
To become a metaphor
Of my life,
Stars not just stars, but
Every one a reflection of
Possibility,
Of new hope,
Visible and bright
At last.

18 February 2011
Composed over the northern Pacific at 37,000 feet

 

 

 

 

Starry Night

 

 

Alone for a moment

Only the steady shush of the ocean,

The chill of the winter beach,

The inconsequential discomfort

Of the wooden walkway

Beneath me as I stretched out

Underneath a blanket of stars,

Thick and luxurious.

 

Too seldom in this life

Have I seen a sky like that.

It’s always been there,

As obscured by haze

As my own path had been

Until now.

 

But no more.

Tonight was clear

In every way,

And for a moment

I laid back,

Allowing this beautiful world

To become a metaphor

Of my life,

Stars not just stars, but

Every one a reflection of

Possibility,

Of new hope,

Visible and bright

At last.

 

18 February 2011

Composed over the northern Pacific at 37,000 feet

I've been mooned

For as long as there have been creatures who could dream and wonder, they've gazed at the moon with fear and awe. It was a moon much like the one pictured here that helped inspire this poem, along with the memory of a poster on the wall of my high-school girl self and snippets of song lyrics by the person on the poster which happened to come out of my iPod that morning.

--------------------------------------------

Measures

 

The measure of a morning,
Twelve even, brick-red ovals,
A misshapen, onionskin moon
Ambling toward the horizon.

I look ahead now,
Toward a wall that isn't there.
A wall I will myself towards—
One more, one more.

I, I was standing
You were there.

I'm not standing anymore.

Once, when he looked back from another wall,
Eyes heavy and beckoning,
I thought I was moving,
But it was a chimera,
Created by the speed
Of life flowing around me.
Just as the passing river
Could trick me into thinking I was moving
As I watched the ripples lap past my grandmother's pier.

Happiness is not rooted in place.
It is the flowing water, not the solitary dock. 

But once I started moving,
No one ever kept up.
He can't now, of course,
But he isn't the only one.

It is always the same—
Out of the void comes
A peripheral jumble and then
…Convergence.
Footfalls in unison.
And I want it to
Go
Please, let it just go on
Forever.
But I cannot maintain forever.
I can only maintain this singular stride.

Neurons still vibrate with the wish as
The feet fall out of sync,
The planes diverge.

When you looked back from the wall, you were wrong.
Worlds don't collide.

And when each trails away,
I am betrayed
I find the fault in myself,
Doubting my own gravity.

Perhaps there is no fault,
Only a difference in pace,
Mine always pushing me ahead
Until looking back reveals nothing
But the gentle arc of what once was
As I orbit the center
And the moon slides away.

--------------------------------------------

And the song that played a part in this...

Photo:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mcwetboy/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

200 more words

It just so happened that my successful month of 100 Words participation coincided with Hurricane Katrina. I had planned to write this post this weekend and share the entries, but what I didn't count on was Gustav.

I was in Memphis, Tennessee that week doing some client work. We were staying at this funny Holiday Inn on the University of Memphis campus. UM has a school of resort management named after Holiday Inn founder Kemmons Wilson, and I believe the hotel itself serves as a kind of laboratory for students. That in and of itself makes it unique, but it's also an all-suite HI (we stayed there many times while working with this client - we called the rooms our apartments). And on one of the floors there was a Kemmons Wilson museum with all sorts of memorabilia and big quotes on the walls. Each room had not only a Bible and a phone book, but a Kemmons Wilson biography.

To be honest, I hadn't followed news of the storm very closely. It was a high-stakes event we were in town for and I was consumed by the preparation. But I will never forget the feeling of despair while watching the news, the way the hotel quickly filled with pacing refugees. Reading these entries now is sobering in that the immense scale of this disaster had yet to sink in. I remember one phone report by Jeanne Meserve, so tinged with emotion and horror that the sound of her voice moved me to tears as much as the scene she described.

I am not a traditionally religious person - there is no being I might pray to - but when I watch Gustav follow the Katrina-worn path, I'm doing something akin to prayer that the suffering will be as slight as possible.

29 August 2005

I am in a Memphis hotel, a place whose website notes that they allow pets. When I read this, I simply thought it was unusual. Little did I know it would become noteworthy. See, a hurricane has been pummeling the Gulf coast all day. A million people are streaming north, some landing here, 350 miles inland at a business hotel with an unusual but fortunate acceptance of animals. They pace with their dogs along the hallways, worrying about the homes that might be gone, the precious objects they couldn’t bring along, the neighbor whom they couldn’t convince to also flee.

30 August 2005

This morning I knew things were bad, but I clung to naive optimism. “Maybe they can recover by Mardi Gras,” I thought. What a triumphant celebration that would be. As I had a chance to watch the news during session breaks, I realized my utter folly. Levees breached. New Orleans under water. Even now, I can’t comprehend the horror facing those trapped in that drowned bowl of a city. How will they survive? How many are dead? From the bedroom of my suite I listened to Jeanne Meserve describe the terrible scene, her cracking voice more powerful than any picture.

Paper Heart

How do you trace the HOW of creation? Sometimes I do something or write something, and the equation is simple. This + that = an obvious result. But sometimes life is cobbled together in ways that can't be easily explained. I could try, but there would be cosines and pivot tables involved, at the very least.

There's this poem I'm going to share. It contains of snippet of something I wrote ages ago (like, college). Fold in nearly 20 years of life, watching "Serendipity," cleaning up craft books, my great love of pencils and a million other random images and feelings and the result is a little piece of writing that will probably take me a while to sort out for myself. As I was packing up my things to leave early today, I wrote myself a note and something in the writing inspired the last little bit I needed to feel like this poem was "finished." Scare quotes because things are rarely finished, right? Anyhow, It's nice to work on something on and off and finally be able to turn the page and check it off the mental list.

Paper Heart

Snap crinkle of
Paper heart
Unfolded to the spot
Where I wrote my name
A dangerous flourish.

You show your heart
So often
Out for display
Not on your sleeve
But in your eyes,
Your breath,
The deep river of
Your words.

It was no surprise
When you tipped the pencil back
And scrubbed
The spot clean,
Not bothering to
Brush away
The pink crumble.

My slippery graphite
Presence removed,
But no tool can
Smooth the me-shaped
Groove.

And so the paper
Will be folded,
Refolded.
Rustling into the same
Origami truth
Again.

And again.
People delight in watching.
They see
Ancient geometry
They never know
How that heart bends to please.
They never sense
The hesitation
As your thumb slows,
Passing over the spot
That once held a name
They never saw,
Or an impression
Only you can feel.

100 Words

A few years ago I came across a site called 100 Words. (First of all, if you use Firefox, you might not want to click that because it causes 18 kinds of havoc for me on FF, but not on IE. Go figure. Second of all, it was 2005 when I discovered it - how did 2005 get to be THREE years ago.) The point of the site is to write 100 words each day. Just 100 words, no more, no less. See those 100 words about baseball in the sidebar? That's where those came from. I did a lot of different stuff - lists, a 100-word poem, storytelling, reflections on the day.

The site makes for interesting, if not brief, reading. There's something that draws me to these nuggets of writing, these tidy packages. Some might find the constraint ridiculous or too limiting. I found it strangely freeing, though. I'm sure many writers can identify with the apprehension of facing a blank page and knowing it needs to be filled. The 100 word limit takes that away, plus the need to hone my thoughts to fit in that very precise box proved to be a good writing exercise.

I only managed to complete one month, and as fate would have it, that month is one of the few they don't have archived for some reason. Luckily, I saved all my entries and the other day I stumbled across them, so I thought it might be fun to share a few.

Tonight I was browsing the journals at Barnes & Noble looking for something new for a project I have in mind. It's amazing how the journal market has grown, isn't it? Not only are there blank books in every style imaginable, but there are also any number of books with pre-printed writing prompts and idea starters. Tonight I wisely skipped the "Chicken Soup for the Writer's Soul" blank book in favor of a soft-cover 5x8 ruled Moleskine, but I have not always been so immune to the lure of the themed journal, as this 100 Words entry will attest. (And y'all can feel free to overlook the fact that I just introduced a 100-word piece of writing with about 5 times that many words.)

25 August 2005

I have this cheesy “creativity journal” with one thought prompt per page and space to record deep, meaningful insights. One page asks “If you could be a car, what kind would you be?” There’s something so Barbara Walters about it that I have to laugh. Suddenly I’m Katherine Hepburn at my desk, pen poised above the journal, one foot tracing invisible circles at the end of an impossibly deeply cuffed pant leg, thinking “do I really have to answer this shit?” Maybe one day I’ll record here what I wrote there. But anyone who knows me already knows the answer.

Spreading a bit more love

I have a pretty awesome collection of friends and lately I've been feeling especially fortunate to have them. As I was running this morning (in the rain, which was delightful, truth be told), I realized I owe a very public and profuse thanks to one friend in particular.

The other day I thanked a friend and fellow poet for his support and encouragement. While Tim's recent support was important and the push I needed to finally post some of my poetry, his wasn't the first. In fact, there probably wouldn't have known there as anything to encourage if it hadn't been for another dear friend, Michael Conlin. Michael and I worked together on two separate occasions (he left our firm and then rejoined a few years later). During his initial tenure, we didn't know each other well. The firm was bigger and more siloed then and our paths didn't cross very much. But the second time around, things were different. The firm was not only smaller, but functions were much closer and there was a lot more cross-functional interaction. And I think I was different, too. I was more outgoing, more willing to open up to new people (or newish, in his case) than I had been before.

So Michael and I got to know each other better and discovered a lot of similar interests, but most importantly, similar passions for writing and literature. Michael has long since moved on to work for himself and is working on getting a novel published - a staggeringly beautiful novel and I'm convinced he's going to be famous one day. So you can tell everyone you heard about him here first. But when we were working together, he began letting me read what he was working on and older stuff. After sharing file after file of his writing, I finally got up the nerve to share one little poem. Huge step as I'd never shared anything like that with anyone who wasn't either my husband or a professor. Much to my surprise, I survived the experience.

Without that interaction and his support, I wouldn't have been sitting at my computer a few days ago, cursor hovering over "save."

On top of all that, when I ran out of gas the other day I was meeting him for lunch and he saw me and stopped to help and got all gasoline smelly on my behalf. Now THAT is friendship.

Thanks, Michael. Next time Pancho's is my treat.

Inspiration and Result

I'm a sucker for writing process - what inspires writers, where do they work, what are their habits, how do they move from spark to flame?

Tonight I want to share a poem I wrote about two years ago. Alex and I had taken a walk up to Emma Willard and I took some pictures. It was a stunning fall day - the pictures came out great. I even blogged about it. We played, giggled, picked up leaves but I also had my mother on my mind. It seems silly to point that out because it's so often the case. As we began to walk home, I remember saying something that Mother used to say and smiling to myself, so happy that she's alive in me in so many ways. Even happy thoughts like that don't come without a fresh bite of grief, and I was struck by the familiar refrain of the paradox. It seems cruel that the possession of some little bit of her still comes with a price paid in tears.

As I considered this, I looked up at the trees and what I saw seemed to confirm everything I felt, so I took a picture of what I saw, and the poem came a few days later. Here are both picture and poem:

Relief

Today I miss you, but differently.
I will always miss you,
But today the contrast of then and now is sharp,
Just as the sky looks impossibly blue behind
An autumn-torched tree.

What is the living part of you in me
That is thrown into
Stunning relief
Against the pain of your absence?

How is it that
Present and past become complementary?

My version of risk taking

Hello, faithful readers. All two of you are about to witness me doing something very scary for me. Those who know me well know that I write and sometimes what I write is poetry. Or something resembling poetry. But few people have ever seen proof that I do this - I play these cards very, very close to the vest. Like, inside the vest, sewn into the lining like smuggled diamonds. Not that I'm implying my writing can be equated to precious gems.

Okay, I'm stalling. Here goes. This one was inspired by listening to Bill Murray introduce Billy Collins on a cd I have of Collins reading his poetry. I remember we were on our way to Cracker Barrel, just Alex and I, and I wrote it on two index cards after we sat down in the restaurant.

*deep breath* here goes...

2 February

The uncompelling buzz of the dryer
Floats through the floorboards.
I linger over a breakfast cobbled from
Last night's pizza and the last freckled banana.

The glossy thud of magazines dropping through the mail slot

Distracts me from nothing.
Oh, there's the mail, I think,
Leaving it where it fell.
And the morning is somehow gone.

Is there time to make it to the cleaners, I wonder
As I sink into the couch's embrace,
Noticing for no good reason that my pajamas
Do not match the upholstery.
And so another Saturday drifts away from
The planned progression of tasks,
That column of boxes along the
Left-hand edge of my life—
Clean house, check;
Inner peace, check—

Instead, I wander through the channels,
More than we need,
More than we can watch, we always say.
I pause at the familiar refrain of a movie
Which seems more at home repeated on this small glass
Than it could have been in any theater,
And as the afternoon sun picks through the undusted air,
I consider the absurdity of a day
Repeating again and again.

Going for the world record

How long can you say you are writing a book without actually doing any writing? I don't know if there's a category in Guinness for this, but if there is, I'm thinking I qualify.

*pause...breathe*

Okay, so that's a slight exaggeration. But still, I have this really good idea. I've been doing my research. Bits and pieces of it come to me and I've done a not-half-ass job of capturing those thoughts. I just haven't written anything beyond the first paragraph.

Part of the problem is that I am just swamped with work, and very little of it is mindless or routine. It's mentally taxing, so a lot of days I feel like I don't have two brain cells left to rub together. I know this will change, and I'm not complaining. If I didn't love my job, I wouldn't do it. But what I do need to do is figure out some when I can get some serious me time to compensate for this, some time to just breathe and regroup and then some additional time to write. One of the many Jennifers I know mentioned she's going on an Omega Rejuvenation Retreat, and that might be just the thing I need, though at a different time because I don't think it would be beneficial for me to go as part of a gathering of friends.

So I'm mentally bookmarking this idea to revisit in a few weeks when I can really think about my calendar and my needs.

Did I say I love my job?

Today is massage day at the office.