April 20: Feeling Like a Poet, Psalm 43, Denial

Once again, today's poem was a gift, this time from my coworker.  As we were leaving work yesterday, I told her that we were supposed to get a storm overnight.  Four to six inches of snow with high winds.  My coworker said, "No we're not.  It's going to be a sunny day tomorrow."  (My coworker is a little tired of terminal snow.)  I told her I would loan her my keys to my apartment on Denial.  "It's a beautiful place," I told her.  We laughed, and I told her that she had given me the subject for my next poem.

Last night's poetry reading went really well.  The graduate students' poems were good, although very, very serious, or (as they say in England) "vedy, vedy, sedious."  By the end of that section of the night, I knew I needed to lighten things up.  So I read a really funny poem to start out.  I had the audience eating out of my hand by the end of it.  Then I read something really serious.  You could have heard a mouse fart in the room.  Then I read something funny, and I finished with yesterday's wren poem.  It was really fun, and I really felt like a poet, instead of someone who just scribbles in a journal and types it up.  My friend, Claudia, was there, and she read after me.  She was great, and we had a wonderful night catching up.

Today, I still feel like a poet.  I guess it's afterglow.  Whatever it is, I hope it lasts for a long time.  I'm still feeling quite stressed, still have a lot of grading and other shit to accomplish for school, not to mention all the church stuff.  I need a break.  Or a piece of chocolate.

Calgon, take me away!

Saint Marty is going to take a trip today, to a little place I have on deNial.

Psalm 43:  Denial

“Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.”

                        ----Mark Twain

I still own a condo there, return

From time-to-time when life gets rough.

It’s a beautiful place where the sky

Stays pink from dawn to dusk, egrets

Basking on the riverbanks, their feathers

Aglow, the temperature, perfect:  74.2° Fahrenheit.

Always.  There blows a gentle breeze

Off the water, and a smell of marsh

Hangs in the air, not too strong.

Last night, with weather reports

Of an April blizzard, eight to ten inches,

I took a trip to the Nile, left

Behind everything but a toothbrush,

Clean underwear, a tube of sunscreen.

I wandered the streets of Cairo, bought

Kabobs of lamb and pineapple, ate

Them on the balcony of my place,

Watched the sunset over the river,

So orange it made the water

Sizzle, jump with color, light.

I saw people I know on the street

Below.  Maija, my friend whose son

Is alcoholic, bipolar, jogged by,

Her body toned, thin, the way

She’s always wanted it to be.

My office mate, Bonnie, waded

In the river shallows, no children,

No students, just the mud in her toes,

Bach in her ears.  So many people

Taking a break in this exotic, pink

Place from all the rocks in shoes,

Hangnails on thumbs, hungry babies,

Mortgages, unemployment, oil spills.

Just a balcony.  74.2°.  Lamb kabobs.

Classical music.  Egrets, not regrets.

And 4,135 miles of water, Lake Victoria

To the Mediterranean Sea.