in mid-february, at the castle, i wrote and posted a poem called 'fragments on aging.' though the poem indeed came out of my own concerns about growing old, the details weren't necessarily accurate. one fragment read:
the bruise has faded but the pain's still there
and now no one says
'you poor thing, what happened?
the only bruise i had at the time was on my toe, so neither its existence nor its fading was commented on by anyone. but i liked the sound of the line. then 2 weeks later in prague, i took a huge spill, vastly bruising my face, and everyone was very helpful and kind and caring through the rest of the term. so much for being abandoned because i was old.
back home, two weeks ago, i wrote and posted an essay on shaking hands. as i explained, it wasn't so much that i thought it was an important subject, but for at least ten years, i had lines in my head for a poem about hand shaking and could never pull it together, so i decided that making it an essay would get it out of the way and it would leave me alone thereafter.
today i sat at the computer to do tax stuff---probably the greatest prompter to write poetry, or indeed anything else, and the poem presented itself to me. i'd never thought of a haiku, though i've written many in my life. but i guess that's what it wanted to be. so here it is:
hands grasp each other
arms reach out,
create empty space. safe.
the bruise has faded but the pain's still there
and now no one says
'you poor thing, what happened?
the only bruise i had at the time was on my toe, so neither its existence nor its fading was commented on by anyone. but i liked the sound of the line. then 2 weeks later in prague, i took a huge spill, vastly bruising my face, and everyone was very helpful and kind and caring through the rest of the term. so much for being abandoned because i was old.
back home, two weeks ago, i wrote and posted an essay on shaking hands. as i explained, it wasn't so much that i thought it was an important subject, but for at least ten years, i had lines in my head for a poem about hand shaking and could never pull it together, so i decided that making it an essay would get it out of the way and it would leave me alone thereafter.
today i sat at the computer to do tax stuff---probably the greatest prompter to write poetry, or indeed anything else, and the poem presented itself to me. i'd never thought of a haiku, though i've written many in my life. but i guess that's what it wanted to be. so here it is:
hands grasp each other
arms reach out,
create empty space. safe.
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