Can a poem be finished? Probably not. When we look at a
line with fresh eyes, we notice the cadence is a little off, the similes
are a tad limp, or a certain word’s dull glow wants to be replaced with a shimmering synonym.
At any rate, I was answering a call for submissions that
ended today, so I had to put an end to my intense editing.
The theme for the submissions was poems from the news. I
thought I would be clever and write something inspired by a New York Times wedding story. Maybe
something about how the couple met through their mothers, two old school
friends who were reunited when they were both widowed and began attending services at the same synagogue.
I was sure I would find a story like that to write about. I imagined a bride who rode
her bicycle to the ceremony, wearing a fern-colored skirt that had belonged to her
grandmother. As for the groom, I pictured him in a shirt of pale blue cotton with a Scottish tie of heathery tweed. He’d had a beard when he'd met his future bride, but he shaved it off when she developed a
rash after their first long session of kissing.
I’ve read many such stories on Sunday mornings in the Style section of the Times. No, that’s not
quite accurate. I tutor a high school student on Sunday mornings, so I usually don’t
get to the weddings until later. On Sunday mornings, my student and I discuss
commas and adverbs and thesis statements. This year he's taking AP U.S.
History (a.k.a., “A-PUSH”), and so before I meet with him, I review my notes on things like the
1882 Chinese Exclusion Act that lawmakers passed to keep Chinese people from
coming to America. According to the A-PUSH textbook, in 2012, Congress apologized, which makes me
wonder what formal regrets the U.S. will express in 2148.
I find studying history as fascinating as it is
depressing. Instead of flying through the chapters in the class text, I read every line, sometime twice or three times.
In contrast, I find reading today’s headlines is just plain depressing: the flames that trapped the occupants of a Bronx apartment
building, a grown daughter missing after a hurricane, a refugee clinging to her toddler as their dinghy was sinking in the
Mediterranean Sea.
I wanted to turn this submission call into something unexpected. I wanted to make my manuscript a celebration of love that would never be printed on the front page. Alas, other subjects called my name, and like a low tire that pulls a vehicle to one side, I felt drawn to write about homelessness and mass shootings instead.
My new poems may never be published. If they are, they're unlikely to make even a small change in the world's path. Or I may not like them myself the next time I read them. But I'm not sorry I looked these topics in the face or that my bones have felt the horror of the facts on which they're based. Instead of basking in the glow of vows exchanged on a sunny hill, I've spent the last month inside the dark cave of a serpent’s mouth where its fangs sank into my veins.
Whoa, was that hyperbole? Yes, but I’m still trembling at the idea of sleeping outside night after night after night and at the thought of losing a child in an act of violence and then receiving thoughts and prayers as recompense.
Of course I’m not literally debilitated by simply writing. And last night I looked up
at the sky and saw the blue supermoon (before the eclipse, so there was no blood moon yet), and I knew this amazing sight was as true as all of the terrible news we take in every day. Then I stepped back inside my old house and shut the door and was cocooned once again by the warmth and comfort and electric lights.
