Through the Clouds

I’ve been working on a poetry project this June, in which I write a poem every day. I thought the switch from daily journaling to daily poetry would be a seamless one. I was wrong.

Writing has always been a painstaking process for me. I handle words like they’re expensive, and I’m on a strict budget. I formulate each sentence carefully––mulling it over in my mind, tasting it in my mouth––before giving it over to my fingers. I work slowly. Too slowly. And by the end of a writing project, I’m exhausted.

Daily journaling is a different kind of writing––it isn’t expensive. Rather, it’s an investment. I’m investing in long-term memory. I’m investing in that 60-year-old version of myself who wonders: “What was I up to on October 20th, 2015?” Like a retirement fund, I put in a few pennies every day and hope it accumulates. And in these entries, I don’t need to get the words exactly right. I don’t need to write eloquently, or even coherently. I don’t need to be interesting. In my journal, words are cheap; I spend them carelessly.

Poetry, in contrast, is the most expensive kind of writing. Each word costs a fortune. Each one must be purposeful, unexpected, thought-provoking. If not every word, every line. It’s hard to make room for this kind of creative spending. It’s hard to make room for art.

I’ll likely post this small portfolio of June Poems when the month is over. You’ll see that I am an amateur––hardly a poet at all. But I’m trying. In the meantime, I want to share one poem.

For context:

The arms have summer have wrapped around me and pulled me above the landscape of this past year. I think about all that has happened in recent months, moments big and small. I think and think and think until the thinking drives me crazy. Like writing, I guess

Anyway, here’s that poem:

June 22 – Cloudy

The past is not fixable 
But it’s not fixed, either
And I keep stirring it up
Clouding the windows 

My thoughts are in past tense 
They take me to empty hallways
Everyone else has left 
Time is a vacuum
But there’s too much dust

Poetry critics, be kind. Ignoring the structure or syntax––or whatever is wrong with this bit of poetry––I stand by its meaning: Reflection can be a dusty cloud. Sometimes, I don’t mind being obscured in the folds of this past year. I like tracing the lines of how I got here, like a maze I’ve already learned the path through. Sometimes, though, I walk through this maze too many damn times. It becomes maddening.

I wonder if other people get trapped like I do, wandering through this cloudy, unfixed past. Stirring everything up, doing it all over again.

I guess this is a strange grievance, coming from someone who journals every day. And it’s true: I journal because I don’t want to lose the past. But I don’t want to lose the present, either. And right now, the present feels more likely to slip away.

So, in the spirit of "holding the present," here are some things that are true. Right now:

-I'm sitting in a coffeeshop––and not taking it for granted
-I'm using the name Matilda at work (for the first time) P.S. I didn't realize the name could sound so casual
-I'm slowly going blond (as I do every summer)
-I'm reading The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green...and wondering about his environmental credentials 
-I might be witnessing the end of America's Covid-19 Pandemic
-I'm struggling to solidify my Honors Thesis plan (which normally comes first, the desire to write or the subject idea? I still don't know.)
-I love my brothers and I think of them often
-As always, I'm grateful for my readers

-mwp