Paint + Poem = POW!

I got CRUSHED and I’m thrilled about it!

Artist Tracy Weil and I teamed up for a painting + poetry collaboration now splashed across a tall office building in Denver, Colorado.

CRUSH is a week-long celebration of graffiti and street art in Denver, Colorado. Every September, nearly 100 artists take over a 30-block area in the RiNo Art District, creating larger-than-life murals for all to enjoy.

Founded in 2010, the event offers a platform for artists to create vibrant and lively works for a free-to-the-public outdoor gallery. This year organizers received over 700 artist applications.

"The essence of Crush is to create a censor-free platform for artists, and for them to get paid for their work while doing it," says artist Tracy Weil, co-founder and head of the RiNo Art District.

There is great power in partnership. In collaboration, perspective shifts. A painting deepens, a poem grows. Meanings merge and boundaries enlarge to create a work broader than the initial singular start.

Uncertainty is the New Certainty is located at 2700 Walnut Street in Denver, and will be available to view for the next year.

See More Tracy & Drew Collaborations:

Where Art Is Made - RiNo Art District - Video Poem

Forecast - painting & poetry exhibition and book

The Making of Dust - art & poetry exhibition

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Why Bother?

Is this a turning point, which is to say a breaking?

Nearly everyone I know is slogging through a bog of exhaustion, mind and body weighted with worry, wondering: how to live in pandemic, in propaganda, in deceit and hate, in flames and flood, in hurricane and heat?

I wish this were metaphor.

There's a lot of why bother because to be bothered is to be worn away. Aren't we all just so tired? 

What’s your strategy, what keeps you going? I keep doing the things I know best: eat, sleep, read, write, soak. Bath as balm. Book as solace. Food as drug. Writing as necessity.

We are the secretaries of the heart, writes Susanne Dubroff.

And so we write — letters, lists, poems and dreams. Writing against clamor, out of sludge, into silence. I keep writing, to you, to the gone and going, to no one and every one. Hear me, hear me, here in the corner huddled, here in the door waving, here in the car moving forward in the only way I can.

Words are paths to emotional sovereignty, writes David Harris.

I keep reading. Looking for wisdom and path, for distraction and delight, for you in the galley, in the gutter, in the page’s last dash. There is a tap-tap-tapping in my head: keep on, keep on.

Eyes blur, pen drags, night arrives early. And yet we write on and on. Like breath, we cling and clutch and reach for more. Words hang on necks, creak through hearts, slip through hands. These words, these words, blanket and balm, heat and life, rest and renewal.

These words — all we have & everything we need.

Why Bother?

Because right now there is someone

Out there with

a wound in the exact shape

  of your words.

— Sean Thomas Dougherty from The Second O of Sorrow

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Fast Five with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

"The poem is not the point; the poem is simply the byproduct of showing up to be wrestled by the world and by language.”

— Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Welcome to Fast Five, in which I ask my favorite writers five questions as a way to open the door to know more.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer is the author of 12 poetry collections and her work has appeared in O Magazine, on A Prairie Home Companion, on fences, in back alleys, and on river rocks she leaves around the banks of the San Miguel River near her home in southwest Colorado.

She served as San Miguel County’s first poet laureate from 2007 to 2011 and as Western Slope Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017, and teaches and performs poetry for addiction recovery programs, hospice, mindfulness retreats and more.

An advocate of the power of practice, Rosemerry has written a poem every day since 2006.

1. 
For nearly 15 years, you've written a poem a day, and shared it on your blog. Can you tell us about your process?

I write at night, usually, after everyone has gone off to their own quiet space in our house. And I sit with a blank page and I wait to see what happens. If it stays blank a long time, I start to sift for ideas. I might look around the room and let my eyes land on an object. Or think about an interaction from the day. Or I might read poems and find something in them that thrills me and then give myself a prompt based on a line or an idea. Or I might read the news. Or look at an image. Or think of someone I want to write a letter . . . so many ways to begin a poem! 

I don't feel pressure to produce, but I do feel the ever present invitation to practice — which feels fundamentally different to me as a motivation. The poem, ironically, is not the point — the poem is simply the byproduct of showing up to be wrestled by the world and by language. The point is the showing up and, as Rilke said, the “being defeated decisively by constantly greater beings.” That’s why I write every day. It changes everything about who I am and how I meet the world.   

2. 
Who has influenced your writing life? 

So many people! Today the first who comes to mind is Art Goodtimes, a paleo-hippie, fungi obsessed, potato-growing wild man poet. When I first moved to Telluride in 1994, he said, “Give me some poems.” And I shared a few and he said something like, “These are nice. I wonder what would happen if you relaxed?”

Wonderful advice. I was writing such tightly wound, cryptic poems. And it was a revelation, too, to watch him perform—he used his whole body and his whole vocal range of volume and intensity. I remember staring at a picture of him with his arm raised while reading a poem and I thought, “How does he do that?” And so I began to experiment . . .

Perhaps most importantly, Art introduced me to a poetry community—sitting in a circle, passing a talking gourd, listening to each other. It was so different from the red-pen-stained critique circles I’d been in before. This community was intent on listening, really listening to each other. Not to point out what was wrong with each other’s poems, but to hear the humanity inside them. I am so crazy grateful for Art, who has been my partner in teaching and organizing and performing and human-ing for 26 years. 

3.
What advice would you offer new or struggling writers?

Something I once heard David Lee say: "Surround yourself by writers who are better than you are." 

4.
I'm a word collector, are you? What are your favorite words? 

sometimes 

(So symmetrical! An s on both ends, then a vowel, then an m, with that slender cross of the t in the center, ah!! Because of my passion for this word, when I was in 8th grade my priest gave me a book of e.e. cummings poetry for confirmation, a gift that opened my eyes to what poems might do.)

perhaps

(I love the softening effect it has on anything that comes after it.)

blossom

 (Both the verb and the noun—this word is like a magnet. I have to force myself not to use it all the time, but it always seems like exactly the right word to me.)

yes

(Perhaps I love using this word too much.)

 and then a host of single syllable Anglo-Saxon-ish words with punch, such as wretch, flunk, slink, scum, wreck, spook, scram, splat, pluck, plunk, scrap, fluke, snatch . . .

5.
In the difficult days, what keeps you going? 

Morsels of beauty & scraps of joy: The scent of the river. Falling off my chair at dinner because I am laughing so hard. Sunflowers in the garden. Erik Satie. Poems by James Crews. Sitting under the stars with friends. Walking alone in the woods. I follow these moments like a crumb trail. Devour them. Sniff for the next crumb.

Bonus Question: What has changed about your process?

My relationship to the blank. A white page used to scare me, stare me down. Now it feels like an encouragement to step into infinite potential. Every time I sit down with a blank, I wonder what might happen. Something! 

• Buy Hush, Rosemerry’s latest book here.

• Learn more about Rosemerry:
TEDxPaonia
Rattle Magazine Podcast

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No Caterwauling

No Caterwauling

Stiff upper lip,

the very thought

is our current

human existence.

Shock is our

reckoning.

— Drew Myron

cat·​er·​waul | \ ˈka-tər-ˌwȯl
1 : to make a harsh cry
2 : to protest or complain noisily

In an effort to keep my head bobbing above the crashing waves of doom, I’m writing, rewriting, and crossing out. Make something, I urge. Some days I make only only coffee, or my bed. Other days, I make dinner or a pie. On the very best days, I make a difference.

But mostly I make my hand move across a page.

And you — what are you making?

---

Summer Always Loves You Back

1.
Are you shoulder-burnt, lips swollen with wine and berries, with a season of satisfaction? Summer knows your story.

2.
Like a geography that grows, summer leaves its shadow — dusty lavender, new moons, slants of patio sun — and always loves you back.

3.
We chase light across every field, never ready for the end.

4.
If we should weep with change, with cool mornings and fading light, if our shoulders should drag and pale, let us remember this time of fortune and bloom, every green thing reaching for more, leaning into the next season with a slow hum of heat, with quiet nights still holy and full.  

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Frettered? Go Read A Book

Are you in the inbetween?

I’m swinging between wanting to settle and sink into a book, and being unable to settle and sink into anything. Busy, tired, frittered, frettered. Is frettered a word? It is now. New rules for this season of upheaval and unrest!

Need a book suggestion? Who doesn’t — it’s like asking if I need a glass of wine. The answer is always yes. In that spirit, I offer a few good reads:

ON DUFUR HILL
by Penelope Scambly Schott

This award-winning poet is prolific, and this book — her 22nd? — captures the charm of a small north-central Oregon town she’s made the home of her heart. These poems-of-place are both specific and wonderfully universal. Do you have a Mayberry you hold dear? Count yourself lucky, and drive on in. I love the sense of place rendered in these pages, but even more I appreciate the way this small town allows larger reflections to grow, as seen in this poem:

Woman Remembering Her Mother

When you were small, your mother
gazed at you with inexplicable grief.

She wanted to say, For my whole life
I have hoped to be known. But you

were a child so you couldn’t see her.
Such a long darkness between you —

I can’t explain why I weep now.

— Penelope Scambly Schott

FIST STICK KNIFE GUN: A Personal History of Violence
by Geoffrey Canada

An essential read. This first-person account of survival reveals our simplistic attitudes and actions toward crime.

“In poor communities the police simply tend to be more hostile, more aggressive, and racist than in middle-class communities. Many middle-class people in America have a hard time understanding why poor communities don’t necesarily see police as helpful in deterring crime, because in middle-class communities police tend to act differently. The friendly officer who has a citizen’s best interest at heart in one community is the hostile officer who shows nothing but disrespect in the other. When you have a mostly white police force in a community of color, the problem gets ten times worse . . .

The reality is this: we pay more to incarcerate kids across this nation than we do to educate them. Can we afford to lock up even more? America is not number one or even in the top fifteen when it comes to reading, math, and Enlgish. We’re number one in locking up children. Are our streets safer as a result? The answer is no. While we have foolishly invested our precious resources in a criminal justice approach to soliving our crime problem, we have nothing to show for it except poorer schools, poorer services for youth, and more people on the streets unemployable because they have a criminal record. Instead of educating and investing in young people to help them grow up and eventually give back to theis great country we have a crisis of voiolent youth on our streets that we pretend can be solved by a strategy that has already failed.”

ON EARTH WE’RE BRIEFLY GORGEOUS
by Ocean Vuong

For months I resisted this book. Everyone loved it but because I cheer for the underdog, I eschewed the hype. But I was wrong, wrong, wrong!

The writing is, well, gorgeous. Vivid and sensory, rich and haunted. The novel is both long poem and full sigh. Beautiful and unusual. Line after beautiful line, passage after page. The mood is dense and rich, the pace slow, lonely and lovely.

“In Vietnamese, the word for missing someone and remembering them is the same: nhớ. Sometimes, when you ask me over the phone, Con nhớ mẹ không? I flinch, thinking you meant, Do you remember me? I miss you more than I remember you.”

THE DEBATE OVER SYSTEMIC RACISM:
Why It Divides and Why It Provides Hope
by Gerald F. Seib, The Wall Street Journal

Trying to make sense of systemic racism?

Take a look at home ownership.

“After World War II, the federal government pumped millions of dollars into programs to build houses to develop the soon-sprawling suburbs — but under policies that denied those benefits to Black Americans. Houses were sold at a very, very cheap rate that allowed for generational wealth to be developed in the white population, and did not in the Black population.”

Read the crystalizing history in this brief piece.

YOUR TURN: How are you doing? And what are you reading?

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Objects for Interior Life

View fullsize

Letter in late summer

Dear — 

I am thinking of you, on these cool mornings
as I walk, and on the sweltering days as I weed.
I am thinking of you as I write, wondering

what you are making of your days, of this time, 
of the heart, how it stretches and too often feels
about to snap but then the smallest thing

— a sunflower's reach, a child calling, or just light
moving across an old wood floor — brings you back
from an edge you nearly crossed, and for a moment
all is well, and for another and another until

it is late and dark and you have tucked
into comfort and you are “breathing just
a little and calling it a life.”

From this quiet space,
I am planning for happiness
and thinking of you.

With love, 
Drew

---

Thankful Thursday: Leggy Resilience

It’s Thankful Thursday, a pause to express appreciation for people, places, things and more. Why give thanks? Because joy contracts and expands in proportion to our gratitude, and in these difficult days we must rise up, give thanks, and keep on.

Like a confession, I’ll admit my gratitude has been small, tired, and primarily comprised of whispered pleas of get me through this, please, please, please.

Still, I’m reaching for the small joys.

On this Thankful Thursday, I am grateful for:

the smell of bleach

sun-dried sheets

horoscopes

my patio

lavender

long soft evenings

my husband’s worn hands

the satisfaction of ironing

mail carriers

library2go

scientists

strangers who trust me with their stories

sunshine

wine

strong legs, strong arms

my dad’s smile

naps

a crisp cucumber

bike rides

audio poems

email

listeners

grocery store workers

my sister laughing

hope rooted in knowledge

tortilla chips, peanut butter, apples

quiet

czech national symphony orchestra

health insurance

fledglings

the neighbor who shares her garden harvest

the other neighbor who comes to my door crying

friends who send letters

nursing home housekeepers & nurse assistants

my lungs

the heavy-headed sun-soaked leggy resilience of sunflowers.

What are you thankful for today?

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Try This: I Remember

Now, our days move with less activity and more reflection. A swarm of memory nags for attention. When the present slows and stills, who can avoid the lingering past?

I advise against it. Nostalgia is overrated. Sentiment is for saps.

And yet, in these heavy days, memories sneak in, sit down and take up space. Sometimes it’s best to give in to our misty water-colored memories, but with limitations. Let’s not drown ourselves in a glowing past, but instead, mine our memories for creative material.

I recently discovered a real gem of a book (50 years after it was first published; I’m always late to the party): I Remember by Joe Brainard.

It’s 167 pages of random recall. Each line starts with the same refrain, I remember, and it’s simple, funny, banal, and brilliant:

“I remember chalk.

I remember how much I tried to like Van Gogh. And how much, finally, I did like him. And how much, now, I can’t stand him.

I remember how sorry I felt for my father’s sister. I thought that she was always on the verge of crying, when actually, she just had hay fever.”

And that’s just page 28.

Memories are so powerful that we cling to them, and then push them away. And years later, when we forget our memories, we curse the loss of mind, our life, our sense of self.

Try This:

1. Start with I remember, and write the first thing that comes to mind. Don’t think, just write. Let your mind flow and your hand move. When that memory dries, make room for the next, and the next. . .

2. Now change perspective. Start with He remembers or You remember or . . . and write your first thought. It doesn’t need to be true or full or kind; this is writing, you get to make it up. Don’t think, just write.

3. When you finish your freewrite, review your work. Is there a good line or a passage with possibility? Start there. Write a story, a drawing, a play. Make a poem or painting. You now have the essential ingredients. Make something!

4. Feeling energized? Share your work with me.

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Make do, make up, make something

Make up.

Make do.

Makeshift.

Make a cake, a drink, a doozy, a dud.

What I’m saying is, to get in, around and through, you gotta make something. Kick your inner critic. Now is the time to make junk. Get loose, let go.

What are you making?

I’m making lists, letters, meals, memos, poems, pictures, cookies, collage, drawings, darings, delights. I’m playing with words and dreams and fears. I’m staying close, inside, mining the interior of mind and memory. I’m making do with the tools I have: paper, pen, words and glue.

Will you join me? Let’s raise the rate of artful expression. Make something now.

Fissure

You want a show, something worth seeing

but here lights blink, engines stall and 

cheat grass takes hold of every chance.     

Want is a language of rusted grumble.
 

You long for the comfort of a crossing, 

some magical door, an arch, to meadowlark 

and soft rolling slope. But what good is                      

this ache, this pressing want? 

You must find the merits of giving up.

Take a flicker of light, some heat, any

thing to stoke your hope. Let the world 

split open. In everything fissure. 

— Drew Myron

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Not Rockets

What are you celebrating today?

Not rockets red glare
or bombs bursting in air

Let us celebrate freedom

To make, march, sing & paint. 

To learn, gather, grow.

To read, write, speak. 

To run, return, remove. 

To turn toward and away. 

To love. To cry. To try.

To error and erase.  

To kneel and pray.

To change.

To breathe. 

To breathe. 

To breathe. 

To be.

— Drew Myron

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A Song, A Movie, A Book

Check your influences. You are what you consume. Books, music, movies — how are you feeding your mind?

Yes, I’m still making a meal of Diet Coke and chips, and overindulging on 1990s television, but I’m trying to balance the junk with the gems. Here are a few of my recent (better) influences:

LISTENING: March March

Just last week The Dixie Chicks renamed their band The Chicks and released this driving song and powerful video. (And catch the protest sign: Ditch Your Racist Boyfriend — that’s excellent copywriting).

See Also: Michael Franti - This World is so F*ucked Up (But I Ain’t Never Giving Up On It)

WATCHING: The End of the Tour

I’m not sure how I missed the early 2000s fanfare for David Foster Wallace and Infinite Jest. But this movie, based on an actual weekend between a Rolling Stone reporter and Wallace, is good stuff. It’s talky and insightful, with great acting and touches of humor.

See Also: This is Water - commencement speeech

READING: Astonishments

This is a quiet book of poems by Polish poet Anna Kamienska. The second half of the collection features extracts from The Notebook, in which she shows a profound and lonely struggle with faith. Line after line pierces and shines:

“In this time of anxiety and searching, one should write something, shape something. Whatever it might be, it could lead to proposing some kind of sense and order. Any situation can become a starting point. Knowledge of life doesn’t have specific beginning and an end. It is like the earth: any point on it can become the beginning or the middle.”

TELL ME:

What’s influencing you — what moves your heart & mind?

And what are you shaping?

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Try This: Wild Cards

Pick a card, any card.

I had forgotten how much I love Poetry Poker!

The other day while cleaning my office, I found these wild cards and the past rushed back to say hello. I made this deck years ago while leading youngsters to the power and fun of writing — but really, this prompt works for all ages (as is true for nearly every writing exercise).

This game, courtesy of Dr. Alphabet, is a fun way to loosen the mind and play with words. Simply take a deck of cards, add unusual words and phrases, deal a hand, and make a poem, write a song, start a story, or . . . . just have fun with possibilities.

And let’s take a moment to applaud Dr Alphabet, aka Dave Morice. He’s my kind of writer: ireverent, unusual, artful, and a “muse out of the world of Dr. Seuss.” Read all about his inspired, lifelong dedication to word play here.

Your turn: Make a Wild Card piece. Don’t think too much, just let the cards fall and the words flow.

More Writing Prompts:
Try This: Word Catching
Try This: Where I’m From
Try This: Make A Scramble
Try This: You Know the Gnaw

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Litany

Three months ago I started a file of Pandemic Poems. 

Words rushed in and writing was both compulsion and comfort. I wasn't trying to "say something” but keeping my head above water in the only way I knew, by writing it out. 

But now an entire season has passed. How do we call this a phase? We're not only in a pandemic, but in a seismic shift of actions, attitudes, systems. This is mental, emotional, and cultural change.

Now every poem carries the strain. 

Things are hard, things are easy. I make them so, or, I make the best. Can these statements be both true and false, and at the same time?

I don’t know what to say or share, how to tell this story. Language fails. And still I keep talking. Language is a secret everyone is keeping, writes Rebecca Lindenberg in Catalogue of Ephemera.

My mind is a crowd gathered too close. All day and into night, the sky is the same static gray. Is this winter or summer? Slumber or resignation? I am not sick and not noticeably sad. Maybe this is surrender.

It's not enough to love and wish and poem and pray.

All over this neighborhood now, nothing happens. Stillness. A few walkers, like me, heads down, crossing before approach.

There's little room left for another sorrow.

---

For Hard Times

Riveted

It is possible that things will not get better
than they are now, or have been known to be.
It is possible that we are past the middle now.
It is possible that we have crossed the great water
without knowing it, and stand now on the other side.
Yes: I think that we have crossed it. Now
we are being given tickets, and they are not
tickets to the show we had been thinking of,
but to a different show, clearly inferior.

Check again: it is our own name on the envelope.
The tickets are to that other show.

It is possible that we will walk out of the darkened hall
without waiting for the last act: people do.
Some people do. But it is probable
that we will stay seated in our narrow seats
all through the tedious denouement
to the unsurprising end- riveted, as it were;
spellbound by our own imperfect lives
because they are lives,
and because they are ours.

— Robyn Sarah

This poem was originally published in A Day’s Grace and appeared again in Good Poems for Hard Times.

Friends, we’re in difficult days.

Heads and hearts are heavy as we experience the unraveling of systems, cities, beliefs. All in this together takes on a deeper meaning with each day.

And so, we turn to poems. The world is full of them, thankfully. In a swift stream you’ve got to find your raft and hang on tight.

Have you a poem you’re holding close?

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On Sunday: Uncertainty

What I’m saying is uncertainty is a way in.

Please pass the humility.

Not knowing, and knowing the more we know we don’t know, is a start.

What I’m saying is uncertainty is the softer strength.

Are you shaken, unsteady, not sure?

Yes, good, let’s start here, rebuilding mind, body, world.

---

What To Do?

This poem, by Langston Hughes, was published in 1931 — nearly 100 years ago — and is still relevant, and still too true.

With a global health crisis, economic upheaval, racial violence and civil unrest, it’s no wonder we’re tired but what’s worse is that this is not new. This is again and again and still.

The world may be on fire, but it’s been burning all along.

With this new urgency, what can we do?

“White people need to do a lot of introspective work to understand the ways in which they personally contribute to, benefit from and tolerate white supremacy,” says Leslie Mac, community organizer.  

While we may never fully understand, we can listen, learn, and work for change. Here’s a start:

Watch: I Am Not Your Negro
A chilling, essential film featuring the powerful writing of James Baldwin, combined with historical context against contemporary events. Free on Amazon Prime. 95 minutes that will expand your mind.

Read: How To Be An Antiracist
At my library, the waiting list for this book runs six months long — which gives me hope that change is possible. Can’t wait? Purchase from your favorite bookstore.

Talk less, listen more:
For white allies, this is not the time to prove your “goodnesss” by sharing how racism makes you feel.

“Any ‘allyship’ rooted in performance is not effective,” notes Mac. “If the action you are taking has any component of making you feel like you did something versus knowing something was done, then you know you aren’t productive.”

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On Sunday: Holding On

Hey there, 

Are you holding on, and how? 

In these rollercoaster days, I’m gripping tight and letting go, in a rush of fluster and relief. I’m in no immediate danger, and so my discontent is a sort of diffused dread. It seems my mind is casting a net and catching every fear, then retracting to calibrate to some sense of normal (whatever that is now). 

And so, here’s how I’m holding on: 

- Writing through 
A friend leads a writing group that because of my work schedule I’ve never been able to attend. Now the group is meeting by email, and I get to take part. Each week she sends out a prompt and we have several days to think, write, and share. The structure is just what I need to feed my mind and feel accountable, and I’m enjoying new work by people in my community that I’ve never met.

- Weeding my worry 
I loathe yard work and have no love for gardening. Yet, I have recently found unexpected satisfaction in tearing weeds from earth. This is the best therapy I’ve had in years! 

- Hearing from you 
Several readers of this blog have shared with me their writing, from Poem Scrambles to Cut-Ups and more. Others have urged me on with words of encouragement. Thank you! I’m heartened to know you are out there, and hanging around here, in this space for writing and reflection. 

Let’s keep together, apart, pushing through & holding on. 

With appreciation, 
Drew

---

Try This: Make A Scramble

For long stretches, I don’t need tricks. Words arrive, phrases flow, and I am delighted scribe.

And then, the door closes with a thud. Block, stuck, mud, slog, whatever you wanna call it, I’m in it and need relief. When I want less pressure and more play I reach for tricks. This week I made a poem-scramble.

Here’s how: Take a poem, cut it up, rearrange, and make your own new poem.

1.
I started with Shelter in Place by Kim Stafford:

Shelter In Place

March 20, 2020

Long before the pandemic, the trees
knew how to guard one place with
roots and shade. Moss found
how to hug a stone for life.
Every stream works out how
to move in place, staying home
even as it flows generously
outward, sending bounty far.
Now is our time to practice —
singing from balconies, sending
words of comfort by any courier,
kindling our lonesome generosity
to shine in all directions like stars.

~ Kim Stafford

2.
I cut up the words, and assemble new, taking care to not “lift” too much whole cloth. If your first pass sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Check the original to ensure that you haven’t borrowed too exactly.

Here’s mine:

In Place, Shelter 


Any kindling is our courier
sending words of comfort
outward in all directions.

Every generosity
works out how to
shine like stars

even now
as we practice
how to move in place

how to stay in shade
how to love the lonesome
like moss to stone.

~ Drew Myron

Your turn! 
Make your own scramble, (or even scramble my scramble). If you like, share your poem with me at: dcm@drewmyron.com 



Want more tricks?
Wordcatching
Cut Up
Overwrite
Headlines

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On Sunday: This Fence

1.
We build a fence. Day after day. In rain and heat, in wind and cold, in more rain. Just you, me, and a refrain: hold, measure, cut, level, drill.

Day after relentless day. 

Maybe there was a call and a duty, in the way that you sometimes hear a voice call softly and think how nice, but the next day your head is a throbbing ache of demands and you think kindness is a chore that stings like penance. 

Still, we keep on: build, break away, return.

Coming along we say, nodding, not too much more.

But there is much more, always more. 

2.
This is not metaphor.

This isn’t political commentary, or an afterschool special with a redeeming end. The fence is real.

This fence is our focus and also our division. Because I grumble and you steam. I don't hold the board steady or cut it exact and you hold back because you are too nice to bellow, but the holding in hurts too. This fence is my weakness, your purpose, my dither, all of it swirling so that the boards aren't straight and I'm dizzy with everything we’ll never complete.

3.
It's fine, I say, meaning it is not fine.

I’m too hot, too cold, too tired, and, really, the world wears me down. I shrug and stray, mutter and sulk.

Still, I’m here, again and again. And so are you.

This fence won't end but neither will we. 

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