December 13, 2022

raw material **

The annual fund has new items listed, with more pictures and a tiny jeweled binding.
At first, it will seem like a mini-retreat, but then it will turn into a legal notice, something
between a manuscript consultation and performance insights, and when you click to get
your reward, you will realize you are saving a date that keeps growing more distant, 
that you’re making the next payment, waiting for the holiday sale around the corner, 
or for Friday to arrive with its door prizes, that you are considering the stoneware catalog
as contemplative reading. Maybe you will leaf through the additional pages, or find 
your own calendar, the irreplaceable one that is less an accounting than a homecoming.
Imagine the bonfire you’ll make of your old revisions, the intimacy of heat on your face,
the raw material of the story you are finally ready to tell.

** I composed this week’s poem by incorporating the subject lines of emails I recently received.