horizontal…forever?
The plateau is real. I realize the idea of feeling like we’ve hit plateau might not be true for others in this moment, and I am not drawing any kind of comparisons to what’s still happening not far outside the walls of this crumbly, crooked Brooklyn walk-up, but right now, I feel the forever landscape stretching out ahead into timelessness. Meaning, as the classic YouTube video David After Dentist quote goes, “Is this gonna be forever?” Is it? It certainly feels that way. It feels as if this new way of life (too much time together! says one of my daughters tonight at dinner) has no actual end, no finality, no promise. It’s getting hard to sit down to write and I wonder if it’s a practice that’s serving as a way for me to feel like I still exist as a person in the world, not just in my home. I need to know that I am here, so I write. I need to hear that I am heard, so I write. I write for you, I write for me, I write to braid us together.
This afternoon, I had the pleasure (and by pleasure I mean that most direct sense — a source of delight or joy) of taking an hour out of a day to practice thinking/creating/listening with The Well’s Mindful Poetry Moments, a very generative and stress-free Zoom call. This is what came from using the Naomi Shihab Nye poem Alive as our inspiration, having a brief group brainstorm in the chat, and 12 silent minutes of writing space. It’s not perfect, that’s no problem.
Don’t forget, nothing really matters except telling the story.
Underneath, after Naomi Shihab Nye
By Lauren Sharpe
Dear Garden, I would like you to happen now, please.
It’s too hard from me to wait
for things to get warmer when
it already feels warm enough.
Danger still lies in wait,
so I wait.
Maybe I need to wash the outside of my windows first.
They are occupied
by paper rainbows that tear
every time I try to open them.
The pitchfork’s wooden handle
fell off into my hand, so I added it to the pile of junk I’d found in your soil.
After I ripped out the superficial roots
with my bare hands, I remembered
there were gardening gloves right there in the tote.
Dear Garden, I am ready.
I am ready to go rhizomatic.
We are already under it all
why not go deeper?
And horizontal!
And we’ll creep below your still-cool,
now-turned earth, meeting and meeting again,
in secret.
in preparation.
Alive
Dear Abby, said someone from Oregon,
I am having trouble with my boyfriend’s attachment
to an ancient gallon of milk still full
in his refrigerator. I told him it’s me or the milk,
is this unreasonable? Dear Carolyn,
my brother won’t speak to me
because fifty years ago I whispered
a monkey would kidnap him in the night
to take him back to his true family
but he should have known it was a joke
when it didn’t happen, don’t you think?
Dear Board of Education, no one will ever
remember a test. Repeat. Stories,
poems, projects, experiments,
mischief, yes, but never a test.
Dear Dog Behind the Fence, you really need
to calm down now. You have been barking every time
I walk to the compost for two years
and I have not robbed your house. Relax.
When I asked the man on the other side
if you bother him too, he smiled and said no,
he makes me feel less alone. Should I be more
worried about the dog or the man?
