The Stories That Poetry Can Tell
Three poems I recently wrote, and how they’re connected and inspired by one another.
Below are three poems (well, maybe 2.5, since the first one is short) that I didn’t intend to write as a related sequence, but ended up that way. I began working on them on 10/3/2020, although they came to me at different times over the course of about 10 days in late September and early October.
The middle one (“The Plank”) came to me first, after I had a dream that a random woman and I were tearing up nasty green carpet in my sister’s childhood bedroom. My sister had a canopy bed growing up, and I think the carpet in her room was green (if I’m remembering correctly). I don’t know who the woman is or was, but we talked as we worked, and she seemed troubled somehow. She talked a lot about sex (hence “the shags” and the double meaning there).
The morning after I had that dream, I was out for a run and the lines to “The Ledge” came to me as I ran (and thought of the woman in the dream). I felt a rhythm to them, which matched my pace for part of the run. I was glad I remembered the words when I got home and could write them down.
I wrote “The Cormorant” after I posted the photo at top on Facebook, and my friend Liz said she sensed a poem could be coming, based on it and my description (which was that I startled a cormorant that was under the dock where I was taking photos of the sunrise). So I took her (good!) advice and wrote something, which was purely creative and not based on anything besides coming up with a story that related to the photo.
When I started drafting “The Cormorant,” I wasn’t thinking of “The Plank.” But once I had most of “The Cormorant” written, I could see a connection between whatever person or voice I was channeling in it and the random woman in “The Plank.” The similarities between the whorls in “The Plank” and the concentric circles in “The Cormorant” struck me as a nice resonance between the two, as well.
Of course, who’s to say how our brain makes connections between dreams, thoughts, and the like. But I like how these hold together as a trilogy of sorts, and that’s what matters most.
The Ledge
I remember your hedges, and
how we counted all the ledges.
Those smooth steps to freedom, and less.
October 3, 2020
The Plank
The last day I saw you
we tore up that mottled green carpet
under your old canopy bed.
You said I would find the secret to life
written in the whorls of the wide pine planks
that had been covered with shags
and decades of dust and prayer.
I kept looking for those words,
long after you surrendered your soul.
October 3, 2020
The Cormorant
I whisper your name
as I watch the sun rise
over the sleeping harbor.
My voice startles a young cormorant
resting under the dock, and
a small storm of oil-black wings
rushes toward the horizon.
He flies low into the light. Clear drops
of water fall from his dark feathers,
creating a trail of shrinking concentric circles.
I read in the water a message from you to me:
Stop spinning and start moving.
October 3, 2020
