Walking round town today
thinking about my poetry audition later this month
I am so far from my poems
so deep into stringing together characters and sentences
that spin
I am working on some old poems today
some that still deserve attention
and kindness
and light
the boys are resting quietly and I am searching now
for that girl again
that girl who sat in cafes and bars
and plucked words from midair and
lined them up like small soldiers across the page
I
if I had an atlas I would
crack the spine
look up
the miles between us
the exact mileage
but I already know
many more miles
than I can imagine
can’t walk there
can’t swim
II
People talks about our minds, more specifically our brains and how people, places, and things are always in the corners. That’s not really true. The truth is far better. You are everywhere. In my hippocampi, my sorting center, which stores and rejects data that bombards me, like the note on my desk, a reminder to send you a poem. In my basal ganglia and cerebellum, which process the information I need to do routine procedures like picking up a pen or licking a stamp that will mail small envelopes to you. In my cortex, the beautiful layer of neurons that house sounds, smells, and images allowing me to picture your face and hear the train that rattles by your house. And my frontal lobes, the most noble part of my brain, where my conscious behavior, actions, and decisions are--my access to you. My complete schema of you. Where I can retrieve and hold you suspended in clarity. You see, there are no dusty small corners of my mind and I don’t need an atlas to measure what truly matters.
4 comments:
'historical Amy' is an awesome label, and a poem in itself, from your current early mothering years period.
Wishing you loads of creative recharging time/head-space to reconnect with the poet you are missing.
She's in you, but you're new too. All of you is where you've been and where you ARE. You've already found yourself.
This is beautiful... I often revisit myself at a lonely period, when I first moved to U.A.. I knew no one and sat in my room typing madly. I still have all of my poems and they still amaze me. There was a man from the Dispatch that was a friend of the family who "kindly" edited them for me... WOW!!! I felt it took away from them and wound up regretting it in a way, but in another I was grateful for his wise input. He was a wonderful gentleman named Walt Seifert. Anyhow poetry like music, photography, anything is such a huge chunk of our lives and sometimes we don't even realize how much so. I am glad you embrace it- and yourself/family/life!!!
those are some strong soldiers. Keep drilling them for us, please.
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