My Poem

The other day I wrote a poem. I’m not much of a poet—poetry is mostly about images, extend metaphors, etc. My writing is mostly about plot, though I try to make the words lovely and I spend a lot of time working on voice, place, metaphor, etc.

I know you’re saying, “What about the Illiad, the Odyssey, the Epic of Gilgamish, and the Aeneid? Granted, they do have plot. And I’m not getting dragged into the fight about whether the Aeneid is really a case of Roman thievery of Greek epic poems. Let’s just say that the Roman idea was to take what was the best of Greek culture and make it their own.

Aside from epic poems and Robert Browning, whom I love, most poems are musings. And I love them for what they are. So Saturday night as I lay in bed, the loveliest poem came to mind. It wrote itself in my thoughts in beautiful word images. I almost reached out for the pad of paper next to the bed (I keep it there because literary inspiration often comes in the moments just before sleep), but I didn’t reach out. I was tired and thought, “Oh, I’ll remember in the morning.” Except I didn’t.

And maybe it’s just as well. I really don’t remember the poem—maybe I only thought it was wonderful. I guess it’s better to have loved and lost a poem, than to never have written one at all.

Okay, that’s really lame. But at least it keeps my mind off the fact that the sump pump in the basement isn’t working...Again. Cal called the plumbers....AGAIN. We’re on their “work list.” It seems to me that if our basement is the measure of their work, their list of repairs must be really, really long.