I have now decided that once a week, I will write a poem and also post it here. Here’s the first one…
A Thing of My Own Making
In college, I learned that poem comes from poiesis:
to make, to bring into being that which did not exist before.
And suddenly, almost everything was a poem:
the strawberries I ate with this morning’s breakfast
had been a poem a twice — first from Earth, and then into feast.
And if it wasn’t, it once had been:
our sun, suspension of light too old now at 4.6 billion years to be a poem,
had once been a surprise to the darkness that holds it.
Some better than others:
the moon-named girl my best friend is forging to be brave & self-coronated
slightly greater than this career I’ve built from words I thread through whitespace
slightly greater than the heartbreak that cracked open whatever ballooned both phenomena.
Some begetting more:
at some point, my father made my mother laugh in a way that was wholly new
and it birthed volume after volume
(two of which were titled son and daughter)
until they each made the other a wreck of animosity
which ended their marriage in a bombed-out dirge.
I let this hypothesis bleed wild:
Because God, if real, must be a prolific poet.
Or if God isn’t, then They must be a poem,
which makes us all smaller yet equally prolific gods.
But it also means, everyday I woke up this week?
And the loneliness that buried me?
And the ache I sometimes dig my fingers into?
Each a thing of my own making.