My promise for the week was to write a poem. I love poetry. I open every class I teach by reading a poem aloud. We don't revel enough in poetry as a culture, so I try and bring a little bit of it to my students' day.
I studied creative writing poetry as an undergraduate at the University of Montana. I attended almost every single poetry craft talk possible when I was an MFA student at Pacific University. I...am not...a poet. At least not a good one anyway.
I haven't written a poem in ages. When I was younger, I wrote poetry all the time, but I haven't concentrated on that form in a long time. I do miss it. There is something exciting about the brevity of a poem, about the small amount of time and space one needs to write the rough draft of a poem, and about the upswell I feel when I feel a poem coming on. I still have those upswell moments, but I've taught myself over time to ignore the impulse. Tragic, really.
So, this promise was about indulging in the moment. About allowing myself the space and the time to get inside a poem and try to wiggle my way inside its skin. The results are not awesome, but it is a first draft of a first poem written for the first time since, I don't know, 2009, maybe? Maybe before. Could be.
Anyway, I wasn't going to post it because I'm embarrassed about it. It is drastically incomplete. The meter of the lines are caddy-wompus, there are these terrible rhymes and alliterations throughout and the urgency of the pacing I was looking for simply don't appear in this version. Also, the ending simply falls off the end of a cliff. I know, my own worst critic. It is a terrible poem, but there is something inside of it that is worth salvaging. And so the long work of the "real" writing of revision begins. I'll keep working on it and see if I can't get it to come into full bloom.
Here it is:
Misdirected
I’ve been cleaning for days:
in office and bedroom,
in laundry and kitchen,
Inside cabinets, under rugs,
On counters and tabletops.
I’ve discarded tinsel and toys,
Chargers and tax forms,
Books I don’t like
and some that I do,
Poems half-written
and ceremonies too.
I’ve dug through essays,
full graded,
And lesson plans
complete.
I’ve thrown away a picture
Of crayon castle and horse
One of many, many more
my daughter drew me.
I threw out my pride,
kept in an essay I wrote
When I was a student
And still keeping things there.
I’ve cleaned cluttered sills,
discarding cobweb corpse.
And, lucky me,
look what else I have found:
tire tracks in underwear
laying on the ground.
The house busy bustles
with swish of broom straw
as I sort and resort
the “treasures” I’ve found.
I sift through the layers,
an archeological task,
and I curse the skin flake
remainders of a life
cluttered full.
I work for days—
cleaning the house,
items to Goodwill,
and garbage upon garbage
to dumpsters and landfill.
I’m looking for space
where a poem will grow,
but I sit on the couch,
too exhausted to know—
upstairs lies my office
where no poet has shown.
To those who have made it this far in the post,
May the institution of poetry forgive me my sins.
Next week's promise?
I'm coming for you, Kerry!
