prelude

Each year for xmas my mom gives me a poetry-of-the-day calendar. You know the kind; you tear off a page every day, and it sits on your desk, and maybe it's how you begin each workday as you sit down with your coffee cup. Yours might be cartoons, or famous quotations, crossword puzzles, or pictures of kittens. I don't judge. But mine was always poems, and there's always been poems, always. No calendar this year (apparently me and my mom were the only ones buying them). And I find myself at the beginning of this year sans calendar, sans job, sans clear direction, and there are always poems.

As my guidebook of searching I will employ the trusty (at least I hope so) volume Contemporary American Poetry, edited by A. Poulin, Jr. and Michael Waters, 7th edition. I will randomly open the book to a poem each day--eyes closed, no peeking, no repeats allowed. We'll just see what comes up and wander around in it. I certainly wanted to use my beloved Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry but this would hardly be fair...it would spring open to all my favorites and not make me work for a damn thing.

So, to begin, a few words of wisdom from our editor, Michael Waters, "Such changes...reflect the fact that any anthology needs to be flexible and active, edition by edition, in order to remain essential." And what, may I ask, is life but not an anthology of experiences? Furthermore, Mr. Waters, "I felt it incumbent on me to honor predilections as much as possible, while still pressing my own thumb, however lightly, on each page." Very nice, Mr. Waters. Let's shoot for that.

Without further delay, and no kidding, here's today's arrival.

January

After days of putting down my poem
to wipe the chair, I see
the skin of the room is oozing pitch.
Steep as a church, a bishop's hat,
the roof is lined with spruce,
and this close to the stove
the heat has opened the sapline
at each dark flaw, as though it tapped
a living tree. Everyday, a pure emanation,
the syrup bleeds to the surface of the wood.

Now, a length of softwood in its craw,
the stove crackles with resin,
and the room itself
stretches and cracks with heat, cold,
the walls' mediation between them.
There are three pale coins of resin
in the usual place on the arm of the chair.
And the momentary flies,
hatched behind the wallboard
or in the pores of the old beams,
stagger down the window's white page.

If I think I am apart from this, I am a fool.
And if I think the black engine of the stove
can raise in me the same luminous waking,
I am still a fool,
since I am the one who keeps the fire.

--Ellen Bryant Voigt

The last stanza...absolutely killer. I suppose I am still a fool. And the heat will always open the saplines of the darkest flaws. Especially if you are the one keeping the fire. I am not apart from this. I am not observing this. Inertia or no, waiting is just an illusion and it is all right now dripping down. Active and flexible, and press lightly with my thumb on each page...