Poetry Is the blank page and then the poem spills out inking out the event setting it in stone or at least in images and textures leading the reader through all the backdrops the weather the angle the sound the sigh here is my point of view exactly mine every breath as it was breathed every action as I would have had it be here are all the juxtapositions and damage see all the ambivalence touch all the uncertainty here is how it was and how I lived it not with headshots and poses but in a sidling up sort of way a Virginia Woolf talk about the vase of flowers on the table not the person at the door sort of way intimate everything include all the layers all the double entendres and all the pregnant pauses but leave enough sense and content that you have still made a habitable space for your gentle reader who graces you with the generous gift of their fleeting attention who affirms that you exist who says for a moment and just how did the light respond when you lifted your cup? Poetry is the place to take your aching and breaking and sit with it, stroke its hand, listen listen listen until you find some stillness and then quietly take some pieces place them here and there in a spare and deliberate sort of way like an ikebana arrangement place all these disparate and maybe disheartening fragments balance them and polish them leave them just barely standing leave the tension of the possibility of crashing intact and then stand back and objectively say ah yes as always how beautiful is this life |