Today was the day

I took out a folder of my old poems.

I don’t know what is in the folder, or where my mind was when I put the poems into this particular folder. There seems to be some sort of decision about the poems I put in as opposed to the ones I didn’t. I think these are the poems that I wanted to do something with, either rewrite, revision, or send out to magazines. But I don’t remember when I made the folder.

Some poems I don’t even remember, which is actually pretty cool, because I can look at them more objectively. I can see when they are just pretty metaphors without grounding context. I can see when they are complete and whole. I can see when they are confusing, and I can see when there are lines that hit hard.

I still have problems telling if they are too personal so that you have to know my story if you want to understand the poem.

I found a few poems about my mother. I didn’t remember writing them.

Almost all the poems are from my previous incarnation before I had kids. When I was still a mamacita, but the word meant something quite different. I have a lot of poems about relationships and break ups and the single life and teaching and then there’s a whole bunch of poems written about and around 9/11/01.

It is hard to go through the poems because I’m having trouble focusing. It’s a nice idea to read poems in the morning instead of doing the crossword, but perhaps I was doing the crossword because I could dip in and out of it while I was watching the kids play around.

I’ll keep trying.

I did feel the urge there, for a minute, to start writing a new poem based upon my current life and the richness of all the physical details that hold so much emotional weight, but then S had to go take a call and the G started crying for papa and trying to get in the house and Ivy needed to be picked up and put down and picked up again and the poem slipped away.

I believe there was something about the stair rail that my grandfather made, and how I could almost feel his big hands holding the wood in place and hammering it together and knowing that he had made it gave me the feeling that he was still here.

This wasn’t part of the urge, but my uncle told me that he laid the stones and poured the cement on the paths of the garden where he remembered my grandfather had habitually walked. And it is the stones of the path that hold back the jungle like wilderness of the plants. They will take over in a week if he lets them.

I wonder if I can try to write this poem now, or has the germ been lost? Or will the kids require I step out of my self imposed time-out?

See more progress on: celebrate poetry month