Better Living Through Introspection

I was trying to make a point last night at Rendezvous, that it’s been a long time since I’ve written anything remotely creative; yet today I sat down in the sleepy haze of a lingering hangover to critique a paper and instead I found myself writing, words tumbling from out of nowhere. Whether or not I like the final product is a moot point — it’s the feeling of writing that I’ve missed, and even sleepy I like it, I love it, I want more of it.

Untitled
The truth is anyone
can figure out how
your heart is put together
given time and desire
or motivation and will,

just like I can snap and stack
one sentence into
five ragged lines
of unjustified text
and call it a poem.

With determination
I can write stanzas
all day long, axing and stacking
phrases the way my father
would chop firewood

in the sandy backyard
of our house in Litchfield
with only the strength
of single-minded purpose
and — of course — an ax,

sharpened ritualistically
each weekend morning
in the half-lit basement
workshop, the sound of
hardened steel on whetstone

dragging itself through
the house with that vibrating
screech that could make
the hair on the back of your neck
stand on end, but only if you let it.

Sometimes I’d lean on the rough
casement of my bedroom window
and watch him methodically
progressing through a rough-cut cord
and only now I wonder where

he learned the desire of invented chores.
I like to think he would find himself
in the momentum of that inverted
parabola, ax back to front, just as I try
to find myself in stacking these words.