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A note:
As I was writing yesterday’s poem, and then preparing to send it to you, I wondered what it was it (and/or I) was wanting / trying to say. What was the deeper intent? There was something at the interior of the writing, but it was still too quiet and faint for me to see it, to know it. I recognized I was distracted by a confluence of things—time being at the top of the list. I had somewhere I had to be, and an hour drive to get there, and I knew I’d be too tired to write after I got back. There were other things too, pulling me in various directions—the news (always), the lists on my desk (always), the weather, the season, the questions of how to find solid ground in a world that won’t stop spinning (almost always). I wasn’t sure what any of these things meant, or if they even meant anything, and how this poem—or any poem—might make sense of the jumble. But I always believe that clarity and coherence are the natural metabolic result of their opposites. So in other words, I needed to be able to accept not knowing. To stop squinting so hard at something that had yet to make itself visible. And to trust that time might wind me toward a deeper understanding. So I gave myself permission to send the piece as it was, which is to say to let it go unfinished, uncentered, unclear. I imagined in that state of incompletion, something would settle, and the unnecessary details would fall away, and what would remain would be closer to what I needed to know and what I wanted to say. So here is that poem this morning. (I’ve included yesterday’s poem so you can see the changes.)
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