For the love of Friday

Oh snap. I am sorry I didn't end up posting yesterday. It was one of those days. An excursion at Costco that took about four times as long as I'd hoped (and the ensuing unpacking of really giant amounts of stuff). Ben's moratorium on napping. Repeated attempts to get some truly boring data entry over with.

But here I am today. All my mumbled excuses aside, let's get to it. I haven't worried too much about the content of this blog, yet, as my first objective is to become more disciplined. But pretty soon, I'm going to have to find some sort of thread that holds everything together. I'm not sure yet if I'm really a writer, and if I am, what it is I write. Am I crazy to think the answer will reveal itself on its own, organically, evidently? I'm hoping you guys will help me figure it out along the way.

In the meantime, I was thinking it might be nice to have at least one structured day in the week. So every Friday, I'll try and post something a bit more...literary. Let's give it a whirl, starting today.

Just to ease into things, I'd like to share a little poem I wrote for a creative writing class last winter. Starting next week I'll have wholly new bits of prose for you guys, none of this dusting off old stuff.

To take you back to where my head was at, our topic that week was Image, Word, and Detail. In that regard we read and discussed Nancy Willard's poem, "How to Stuff a Pepper," which I think you'll agree is quite a treat:

Now, said the cook, I will teach you
how to stuff a pepper with rice.

Take your pepper green, and gently,
for peppers are shy. No matter which side
you approach, it's always the backside.
Perched on green buttocks, the pepper sleeps.
In its silk tights, it dreams
of somersaults and parsley,
of the days when the sexes were one.

Slash open the sleeve
as if you were cutting a paper lantern,
and enter a moon, spilled like a melon,
a fever of pearls,
a conversation of glaciers.
It is a temple built to the worship
of morning light.

I have sat under the great globe
of seeds on the roof of that chamber,
too dazzled to gather the taste I came for.
I have taken the pepper in hand,
smooth and blind, a runt in the rich
evolution of roses and ferns.
You say I have not yet taught you

to stuff a pepper?
Cooking takes time.

Next time we'll consider the rice.

Yummy, isn't it? I leave you with my response:

The Eyes of March

Sometimes they are babies.

This one, his skin wizened rough,

has seen many days. Felt the earth shift and groan.

Cocooned in the loam of a million things,

from a million years.  

His mother had seen too much beautiful light,  

through unblinking eyes, so many perspectives.  

Her cup runneth over, she put down roots  

as she dreamed of faraway patatas,  

never having known her papas.  

It was a quiet and oculus birth,  

snowbirds caw-cawing overhead.  

The ground thawing and trembling  

once again, under the hooves of mighty ants.  

Now he hunches, hoary and gnarled,  

longing to return to that womb of matter.  

He gets a bath, scrubba scrubba,  

waterfall loud and heavy all around.  

He asks to be dunked thrice,  

and I oblige. It is the least I can do.  

I, the lazy hunter. Picking off this easy target,  

this humble workhorse. Swoosh! the slice.  

Weathered skin yielding to wet,  

dense, whiteness. The pan a-sputter  

with impatient butter.  

Farewell, dear spud. From me you shall receive  

no litany. Just a sprinkling of salt,  

your eyes already faraway,  

on your way home.