I’ve been wanting for a while to try to explain what I think I’m doing here, posting a poem every day, so here goes. I didn’t write much at all, for many years, and I believed that writing was over and done with for me, and I mourned its passing. Then last year (2016) I began to wake up, and the poems began to come back. By early November, they were starting to come every day, and I happened to re
ad about a poetry press engaging poets to do just that, write a poem every day, for a month. It caught my interest. I didn’t want to get into a contest, but something in the idea appealed to me, and I could see that I’d actually been doing pretty much that for a while. And I thought, so why don’t I just do that, write one every day. It’s been 9 months, and I’ve only missed a couple of days, in the winter, when I was too sick to sit up, and a bunch of my friends are kind of participating, because they read them here or on an email list I send out, and they feed back or sing a song or write a poem themselves. I especially like it when they send a poem on to a friend, or a bunch of friends. I always said my idea of publishing would be to stand on a streetcorner and hand out poems. Kinda like this. And thanks to the web, I can be in touch with my dear far friends as well as my dear near ones. Another thing. I think in all those years I wasn’t writing, maybe my ear got better – and maybe I learned more about how to wait for a poem to be right. That’s something George Johnston used to talk to me about – George is gone now, and if you don’t know his poetry, it’s a shame. Happy Enough is a good book of his to start with. These days, I think about George often, early in the morning, when I’m waiting for the poem. I suppose it’s a ritual of sorts. Most days, I have no idea what I might write. I have some notes – phrases, quotations that interested me – and most days, words just begin to come. I sure like it. I sure hope it keeps on. At this rate, I could imagine living a long long time.
