November 16: Boring Normal, Richard Blanco, "Since Unfinished"

You know, some days feel like they're never going to end.  It's usually the bad ones.  Funeral days.  Final exam days.  Getting fired days.  Misery seems to slow down the hands of the clock.  On the flip side, some days go by in a wink.  Birthdays.  Wedding days.  Christmas days.  When you want a day to go on forever, it explodes like a beautiful firework and is gone, leaving only a glowing reminder against the stars.

Today, I'm experiencing neither of those things.  It's a normal day.  Nothing too terrible.  Nothing too great, except for the brownie I just ate.  Normal days are okay, too.  They're sort of the connective tissue between the fantastic and the cataclysmic.  While I like the fantastic, I'm very comfortable with normal.  Plain, boring normal. 

I think that's what the poem below is about.  The muscle of life.  The unfinished stuff that holds a person together.

Saint Marty isn't sure he ever wants to be finished.

Since Unfinished

by:  Richard Blanco

I’ve been writing this since

the summer my grandfather

taught me how to hold a blade

of grass between my thumbs

and make it whistle, since

I first learned to make green

from blue and yellow, turned

paper into snowflakes, believed

a seashell echoed the sea,

and the sea had no end.

 

I’ve been writing this since

a sparrow flew into my class

and crashed into the window,

laid to rest on a bed of tissue

in a shoebox by the swings, since

the morning I first stood up

on the bathroom sink to watch

my father shave, since our eyes

met in that foggy mirror, since

the splinter my mother pulled

from my thumb, kissed my blood.

 

I’ve been writing this since

the woman I slept with the night

of my father’s wake, since

my grandmother first called me

a faggot and I said nothing, since

I forgave her and my body

pressed hard against Michael

on the dance floor at Twist, since

the years spent with a martini

and men I knew I couldn’t love.

 

I’ve been writing this since

the night I pulled off the road

at Big Sur and my eyes caught

the insanity of the stars, since

the months by the kitchen window

watching the snow come down

like fallout from a despair I had

no word for, since I stopped

searching for a name and found

myself tick-tock in a hammock

asking nothing of the sky.

 

I’ve been writing this since

spring, studying the tiny leaves

on the oaks dithering like moths,

contrast to the eon-old fieldstones

unveiled of snow, but forever

works-in-progress, since tonight

with the battled moon behind

the branches spying on the world—

same as it ever was—perfectly

unfinished, my glasses and pen

at rest again on the night table.

 

I’ve been writing this since

my eyes started seeing less,

my knees aching more, since

I began picking up twigs, feathers,

and pretty rocks for no reason

collecting on the porch where

I sit to read and watch the sunset

like my grandfather did everyday,

remembering him and how

to make a blade of grass whistle.