October 29

On further investigation of myself, I’ve found that perhaps I’m not all that interesting. I keep looking to the past—the past as if it has the answers, the past as if it’s a map of where to go next. I’ve circled and circled, twisted and spied. There’s so much there in the past but also nothing. Nothing of consequence, anyway.

Let’s just move on.

I revisit the poet. Something compelled me to write about Anne Sexton, the first poet who ever blew through my heart. I wrote about being an adolescent and finding her book, The Death Notebooks, in the library. How arresting was the cover, how scandalous the poems. I was smitten and that was that. Whatever poet was inside me wanted out.

I was more than happy to oblige.

So, the other day, I pulled The Complete Poems off my shelf, an old and battered copy, the pages barely hanging on. I held it heavy in my hand, then flipped it open. Remember this. Was that a question or a command?

Remember this.

All I do is remember. The past might have a key after all, and hindsight is twenty-twenty. Those hey-days are right behind us while the future looks foggy and bleak. I can barely make it down the hallway of today, feeling my way along the walls in the dark.

Where is the door handle? Where is the door?

It’s late afternoon and the kids are occupied before dinner. I’ve thrown a frozen pizza in the oven again because I can’t stand the thought of cooking. Most everything has me listless, uneasy. I haven’t read a good book in months. I’m sick of TV and podcasts. A few weeks ago, I unsubscribed to everything, leaving vacuous space inside me.

Why can’t I come to the surface? I need some fresh air.

It’s 5:15 and I’m on my alma mater’s website, stalking my old professors and checking up on the books they’ve assigned this semester. Somewhere there’s a girl going to class and writing poems. She works at the bookstore and feels like a fraud. She’s lost, but she has her art and her ego—two things she can live off, if she tries hard enough.

Only that’s not true. She’ll get sidetracked—first by a boy, then by a job, then by a baby. She’ll shift her art from poetry to prose and from prose to photography. All that creative energy will echo through the years, the force of will so strong that the echo lasts a while. She’ll conflate the echo for her creativity. Then, one day, the echo will fade.

(This is a sad story, apparently.)

Then, she finds herself in a mad rush trying to put together the pieces. The past is a map, after all. The pieces are here somewhere, somewhere in the dark hallway. Where is the door handle? Where is the door?

She’s rushing, then slides to a stop right in front of the bookshelf. An old book—twenty years old, at least—finds its way into her hands. She’s broken the surface; she can breathe again.

She hopes, anyway. It’s too early to tell.

We need the poets, but no one listens to the poets. Or only some poets and only sometimes. The rest are working quietly at their desks trying to change the world one line at a time.

And all her thoughts are in lines. One breathy phrase after another. Which is how she’s always written, both poetry and prose. Which is how she lives and moves and breathes. Which is how she has her being.

A poem, always a poem.