IDEE FIXE

I'm going to weave a few random thoughts together.

One:
I read quite a bit of Roland Barthes in college and, occasionally, when I should be relaxing or just being present, I find myself retreating back to that place where a writer must be in order to 1) sustain his/her order, 2) be located--mentally--in order to write. If you never read the essay I'm talking about, it's in a book called Mythlogies. Barthes takes on a series of topics, including professional wrestling as a form of greek drama.

But it's this notion that a writer never can take a "holiday" or a vacation, as I think everyone says nowadays, that's alarming to me.

Two:
Can Poetry Matter? is a book I have often wanted to read, but always held myself back from purchasing. It seems silly to buy a book and question if what you do matters, as if you need permission from someone to help you cross your t's and dot your i's in order to come to some logical paradise where it's okay.

Three:
I learned a new word yesterday: idee fixe. It's an obsession. I'll write an authobiographical sentence to show its usuage.

"I lay awake at night unable to satifsy the demands of an idee fixe that's taxing me."

Okay, so that's a horrible sentence but you get the idea.


The Big Finish: 1+2+3= ?

There's a sort of give-and-take involved in writing. Give an hour of your day reading the dictionary, find three words that help you to write a poem. Obviously, there's a more dramatic form.

Say, you give praise to your God and He takes it.

Say, He gives you the hope of thinking you and your wife were expecting, then He takes it away.

This happened and though I know I should be taking the time to be human, to just reflect, I find myself in a frenzy to compose, to take what is broken or stolen and possess something of it.

In this way, since I don't know how to take a "holiday" from writing, and since I am always desperate to prove that poetry does matter, I find that my idee fixe isn't poetry, faith, or even myself. I have come to realization that what I seek to prove can not be tested, not really. And so I write. These poems are a way of coping, a form of therapy I'm not sure is healthy or unhealthy but somehow necessary.

I hope you can appreciate them. They are hard-earned and for an unborn child.


SNOWGLOBE

White flakes hovering like suspended birds—

Shake me today, watch the sky
turn pink.



WOMAN ON A BICYCLE IN FEBRUARY

Tensing her jaw
she doesn’t know me and looks down
as I pass in the car

exaggerated space between us




SUBWAY

No. Not that one.
I’m waiting
for the slow train.
The one
appearing
in the middle
of a dream,
the one
where everyone I love
is waving

cold steel rushing by



CELL PHONE

Stop it. I tell myself the phone’s not ringing

but I hear it

and don’t tell me you don’t know

who’s trying to call




THREE DAYS LATER

I don’t know if you’re in pain
or what the policy is for the miscarried.

If you’re in heaven, now, three days later,
missing something

don’t worry. I’ve been missing that, too,
my whole life.




THE HIDDEN DOOR

Waking early,
headed into the city on a Saturday morning,

she puts her chin on my chest, asks

if I will ride to Nazareth with her.

Arriving in the dark,
to a campus we’ve never seen, it was raining

as I scanned the campus

tracked a woman in a blue slicker

who pointed us
in the right direction before disappearing

in the rain.

*
Following signs to Smyth Hall,

I held her close
as I am apt to do whenever we’re together

in the lamplight of a campus,

strolling, holding hands.

*
Opening the door,
I took the umbrella, shook it, then

opened a second door, kissed you

wished you luck as you hurried to the exam

behind a third.

*
In a tiny lobby with two chairs in adjacent corners,

I picked the green one

and sat facing a slumbering sky.

Reading a few poems,
thirty minutes passed as the clouds parted,

as the sun began to rise.

Starting out both sets of beautiful wooden doors,

I noticed
how the stained-glass of the outer door began

to reflect light

through dozens of tiny squares catching the tint

before it was lost.

*

Looking up, I saw a wave in the woodwork splash

along the ceiling, revolve

around the room.

This is a church, I said.
Delighted, I ran my hand along the brass railing, paced

the room reading college trivia

when a color wheel entered the room,

suddenly,
filled with knowledge for what this time is for,

I touched the light in half-stride

revealing a hidden door into a church for one.

*

Taking out my pen,
I’m sorry Mr. Merwin, but I needed paper

and it was snowing and the bench outside
blazed in the hope of my kaleidoscopic eyelash

believing everything it saw,
the world expanding to absorb the light rising

on the tips of snow-brushed trees.

*

Turning my hand
over to receive something

it startled me

to see a berry-shaped glow on my palm.

A raspberry,
I say, hearing my wife’s voice from nights before

say, Honey it’s the size of a raspberry,

my joy, exploding through my body,

shaking me.

*

Writing on the leaves of raspberry cane, I find

the boy who disappeared in snow

has returned from a field where the sun was endless

in the land
that is no longer the land but a seed between my teeth,

a memory in my fingernails.

My whole life—

How long
I shivered wondering if the storm within me

would ever allow me to touch a reflection

of my blood. This love I have to give, child—
only you,
specifically you could find me here and end my winter,

tether me down from the flight of wandering,

from wishing I were a bird.




MUSEUM OF SCIENCE

Outside past the parking lot

there’s two red circular domes,
two plastic phones

fifty feet apart. I don’t know

how it works, but know
how it feels to be a father listening

for his child on the other end.