Maps and Signposts

In which a poet revisits two of her bossier poems, and finds just the instructions she needs.

Photo by ardito ryan Harrisna on Unsplash

When I write a poem I try hard to stick to imagination, description, and response. Every now and then, though, I find myself writing something that reads like a set of instructions. Bossy little person, I think to myself, who do you suppose needs the benefit of your advice? That turns out to be, well, not a rhetorical question … and the answer, as they say, may surprise you. It surprised me.

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HOSPITALITY


When you get up in the morning and find sadness
sitting silent in your kitchen, hands in her lap,
last night’s teacup cold beside her on the table,

well, it will be a slower day than you had planned. She will
be in the way. Not meaning to, just being. The simplest thing
to do is take a breath and make her welcome.

So put the kettle on, put bread in the toaster, put out
napkin and plate and jam, familiar morning comforts.
Sadness may not be hungry; even so, make time for breakfast.

Stay gentle in her company, no pointed questions
about how long she plans to stay, just quiet talk,
the day long, of ordinary doings as you do them,

and let her silence answer you. It may be long
before she speaks herself; no answers needed then,
only your listening, breathing in and out with her.

If you find, when night folds round you like a blanket,
that she has lain down in your bed, lie next to her.
There will be room. There may be tears. There will be rest.

When you wake up you may find sadness still beside you,
her cool hand heavy on your chest; or she may
have risen and moved on, for now. The simplest thing

to do is take a breath, put on the kettle,
welcome whatever visitors the day may bring.

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“BUT I CAN'T WRITE IN HERE!”


Don’t blame the notebook.
The notebook is not the problem.
The notebook is geography.
Move from lined page to no lines and back again,
from hard-cover to soft,
from cheap pulp to acid-free rag – the problem
moves with you. The page stays blank.

Don’t blame the chair.
The chair is not the problem.
The chair is geography.
Move from cushions to no cushions and back again,
from the high-tech office model to your grandma’s rocker,
from beanbag to barstool – the problem
moves with you. The page stays blank.

Don’t blame the room.
The room is not the problem.
The room is geography.
Move from study to porch and back again,
from bedroom to kitchen,
from your private office to the lobby – the problem
moves with you. The page stays blank.

Don’t blame your head – 
although, your head is the problem;
your head, and the geography
of blame that fills it, a full-color map
of your fear that the wrongness of you
outlaws all self-expression. And how, how 
to move from blame to freedom and not back again,
away from the problem that moves with you?

Leave the next line blank.

Then fold up the full-color map, stick it
in the back of your intolerable notebook.
Sit down in your excruciating chair
in that insufferable room, and fill a blank page
with blame: the slickness of the paper,
the wobble of the back leg, the way the walls 
and carpet smell like last night’s soup. 
Write it all down. Fill another page describing
what a real writer’s notebook would feel like
in the hand, where that writer would sit
and in what kind of chair, what a real writer
would have to write about – the scenes, the stories,
the moments, the metaphors. Describe
them all. Don’t leave one out. Slip them
into your notebook like a pickpocket.
If your anxious head protests again the wrongness
of what you are doing, the wrongness
of you in general, make your reply 
polite but sketchy, too elsewhere for blame. 
Don’t call what you are up to, writing. Call it 
studying geography.

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[You can hear an audio reading of the two poems, and probably some ambient street noise, using the little widget above the photograph.]

So I came down with COVID for the first time in the middle of August. By CDC standards it was a mild case: I never had a high fever or difficulty catching my breath, I just felt lousy, and flattened by fatigue. And vaguely ashamed over somehow having succumbed to the damn virus after three years of diligent precautions, and flattened by fatigue. And frantic when two of my precious five senses switched off temporarily, and flattened by fatigue. (You’ve begun to discern a through-line here.)

By the end of the first week I was testing negative, and the feeling-lousy symptoms had pretty well subsided; the fatigue remained comprehensive. By the end of the second week I could taste citrus fruit again, and almost smell my coffee as it was brewing; the fatigue was starting to lift a little, but kept steamrollering me when I least expected it. By the end of the third week I was … well, I was no longer fatigued, exactly, I just didn’t feel like doing much of anything. I absolutely didn’t feel like trying to write. Mostly I felt sad.

Lazy, shouted the ever-helpful committee of critics in my head. Gold-bricker. Hypochondriac! Eventually a quieter, gentler voice spoke up: You just got beaten up by a virus that’s killed millions of people, a virus you’ve rearranged the last three years of your life to try to avoid and that found you anyhow. Is it so weird to feel sad? And weren’t you writing a poem about sadness, before all this other drama kicked up? Maybe go look at that.

And there was “Hospitality” in my Final Drafts folder, speaking in its own quiet, gentle voice, inviting me to make room (and possibly some breakfast) for what I was feeling instead of shouting at myself to feel some other way. I knew immediately that this was the poem I wanted to share with you next. When I cast around in my memory for something to pair with it, up popped a particularly bossy number that I’d written back in 2017 … and lo and behold, “But I Can’t Write In Here!” wrapped itself like a cool cloth around my reluctance to write and said, Yeah, okay, make the reluctance into a game and write about that. Forget Deep and Meaningful, for now; just be Here.

So, a report from the middle of my fourth week since testing positive: gently, quietly, I’m moving back into regular activity, including in my notebook. I’m out of practice and need to redevelop my stamina, but that’s doable; I’ve done it before. I am, in fact, Here, present in my life and in my writing. And I found my way back to Here using the directions that my Past Self scribbled into a couple of poems, so that my Future (now Present) Self could find them and use them as aids in navigation. Which is as good a reason as any for saving the occasional bossy poem. If it reads like a lecture today, tomorrow it may read like a map that shows you the way back home.