Hosted by Rhonda Edgington and Randy Smit
I recently read that everyone is writing these days about the pandemic, and anything else may act like it’s not about the pandemic, but it really is. That seems pertinent to this newsletter’s Poetry Corner, and our thoughts preparing this column. On one hand, it’s the elephant in the room, that we can’t not write about. On the other, I’m getting a little tried of the subject, and if everyone’s already doing it anyway, who needs another pandemic poem (Randy said I should share mine here, but it still needs work!).
The Academy of American Poets held an event in April called Shelter-in-Poetry, inviting readers to send in the poems that were speaking to them during this time. It was fascinating, as readers shared many writers and poems that have been around for much longer than COVID-19, and yet they still spoke in timely ways to this new moment. This poem came to me from one of those lists. I love the twist at the end. ~Rhonda Edgington
The Conditional
Ada Limón (1976- )
Say tomorrow doesn’t come.
Say the moon becomes an icy pit.
Say the sweet-gum tree is petrified.
Say the sun’s a foul black tire fire.
Say the owl’s eyes are pinpricks.
Say the raccoon’s a hot tar stain.
Say the shirt’s plastic ditch-litter.
Say the kitchen’s a cow’s corpse.
Say we never get to see it: bright
future, stuck like a bum star, never
coming close, never dazzling.
Say we never meet her. Never him.
Say we spend our last moments staring
at each other, hands knotted together,
clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.
Say, It doesn’t matter. Say, That would be
enough. Say you’d still want this: us alive,
right here, feeling lucky.
The Writing Corner
(With thanks to Laurie Baron, my writing co-facilitator at the Allegan County Jail and Harbor House and simply a great person with whom to write)
Free writing about difficult experiences can help us process those emotions and experiences. With that in mind, I thought we could offer a writing prompt and encourage those who feel led, or even just intrigued, to get out your journal, an empty notebook, or a blank sheet of paper and see where it takes you. If you don’t feel at all inclined, and in fact your first impulse is to dismiss the offer, you might instead wonder what sparks that reaction and write about that. Or take this admonition to heart by Abigail Thomas, from her powerful memoir, A Three Dog Life:
I didn’t start writing until I was forty-seven. I had always wanted to write but thought you needed a degree, or membership in a club nobody had asked me to join. I thought God had to touch you on the forehead, I thought you needed to have something specific to say, something important, and I thought you needed all that laid out from the git-go. It was a long time before I realized that you don’t have to start right, you just have to start. Put pen to paper, allow yourself the freedom to write badly, to get it wrong, stop looking over your own shoulder.
No one is looking over your shoulder—what do you have to lose? Here’s the prompt:
List five things you have feared, and five things that have comforted you. Pick one or more from your list and start writing whatever comes to mind. Follow where this takes you. To take a cue from Abigail, you don’t need to know where you’re going, you just need to start.