I have reorganised my workspace by appropriating Toni's share of the top and leaving empty space for books and notes. The difference has been astonishing. Reference is so much easier when you can spread out!
So, I put the poetic output of the last week or so down to the fact that there is space to work. And, having the space makes the work seem like a gift rather than an imposition.
Whatever the reality, I am writing more now that I have space to breathe - now that the claustrophobia of towers of CD cases topped by an ever-threatening, book-heavy shelf has been -well, moved at least. I am not the world's best thrower-outer and so everything has been moved and slightly rearranged rather than decimated.
Still, I am going to make the most of the intellectual spaciousness that I feel is pushing me forward and write as much as I can.
The following poem is taken from notes written during one of my Poetry Group's meetings. These are the notes that I am always meaning to make into poems and never quite get round to. Well, space=determination at the moment and so one (at least) of the lurking poems has been written.
The stimulus was the word, 'Celebration', which I took to mean the petty triumphs that mark a life. I wonder with the way that young lives are now recorded by mobile phones if there are any of the baby rites of passage that are in fact, "unmarked and unremembered" - and there will even be a date, time and place for the photos or the video taken!
I, however, grew up in the Kodak 50's when the taking of a photograph was more of an event and not be to taken lightly - especially in poor light conditions! So, much of my experience is via faulty memory aided by the storytelling ability of my parents; an oral tradition which is as old as our species.
I think I like the idea contained in the last line of the poem, "and I still strain to be." because it seems to me that we contain and exemplify everything we have been and done - and even our conscious/unconscious forgetting of part of our lives still has a part to play in the making of who we are.
Celebration
Just when was it
thumb-sucking
stopped
the length
was reached
the book
was read
the
scrambled egg?
No dates for those first firsts.
Unrecorded moments pass,
unmarked and unremembered,
slid from memory’s sly view
by those concerns, grown-up
and practical.
And can I still recall
first
mother’s love
regard for
someone else
keen
thoughts of next?
When next will be no more.
Lost celebrations keep on making me,
and I still strain to be.
I have kept to the general notes that I made during the poetry session, especially in the ideas in the questions because they seemed compelling at the time and I look back on my selections now and wonder. Which I think is a good thing.
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