Why Poetry: A Partial Autobiography

It’s about to rain, suddenly

and without mercy.

The rain will be brief, I can tell,

but I will be driven inside within earshot

of those anxious sounds bent

on occluding my mind

like a pile of unpaid bills

—perhaps I will even see the pile of bills.

The rain will be brief, but no matter—I won’t

get back outside tonight.

~

So, I have maybe ten minutes

for this to get said

before all is wet and after the fact

~

because I have only a succession

of chances,

most missed.

~

Cal is finally fast asleep; the machine

that makes the mist that keeps

his trach moist rattles like an idling truck.

Simone is plotting something, standing and yelling

in her crib, jumping now,

        her sleep a bad joke.

Ten years since last I was alone.

My mind is not my own.

~

Reading the new poems tonight of my old teacher

—she was never taken with me, not

particularly—I admire her lifelong pursuit

of childhood

through art.

She has pursued art as though

it is as serious as childhood,

which we all pursue to the end.

~

And yet, if her poems—ornate as stained glass

leaning against a wall in the glass shop, windows

looking in on almost

nothing—say anything,

it is, I am alone; beauty is everything

except company, so beauty is nothing, almost.

~

Does she want what I have? Do I? My poems

lie.

The rain is coming. A few drops more and I’ll lose

these letters. Simone still won’t sleep.