It has become a habit this poetry writing in the morning. I am not a morning person. But writing in the quiet is very soothing to one who does not usually have the power of speech until two hours after rising, except to exchange civil greetings. The poetry writing neural pathway seemed to have formed a groove that I want to keep fresh and well-traveled.
But it is May Day, or Bealtaine, and in Ireland the air has turned almost balmy. Everything is all leafy and juicy green. There is sunshine and the washing machine is humming. So are the bees on the comfrey. The world may be a Bealtaine bonfire, but the birds are singing their hearts out. Which may also be why it is important to keep on and write poetry. It’s a way of building a healthy moral and emotional immune system. It builds resistance.
So, one more poem. I haven’t decided yet if I will keep posting regularly or not. I have a full collection of poems in the works. Time to get back to that. My friend Helen Shay and I are also hatching another ‘poetry conversation’, a two-hander of poems that can be performed. So keep in touch. Follow the blog if you want to read updates.
The raw second or third drafts have been what was posted here. Yeah, there will be a lot of revising and organising in May. The NaPoWriMo2017 site joked that May is NaPoReMo – National Poetry Revision Month. I didn’t read that until I had finished a reworking of a poem drafted last September. And the person named in the poem will now have to write me one back!
Paperbag Poem
The preserving jars
Carefully wrapped
By the shop assistant
Arrive home
Perfect
Smoothing out
For recycling
Recalls a September
Forty years or more
Pristine
Paper lunch bags
Half a cream cheese
And pimento olive
On white bread sandwich
Fridays
High school cafeteria
As amphitheatre
Time cascades down
Like a slinky marching
Backwards
Suddenly
Richard Knecht is standing up
Blowing into a brown bag
Punching it
Goes ‘pop!’
Here is a brown paper bag
Naked of my name
Pencilled in
My mother’s precise
Handwriting
I am free to fill it
Scrawl over it
With crayon, tempura or ink
My imprecise
Imaginings
To breathe into it
Toe let it go ‘Pop!’
This brown paper bag
A memory
And object