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violetcheetahFrom tonight's workshop:
-----
I am a footless bird, but no matter, you say:
You only need wings to fly.
How much better this is,
To be unhampered by useless limbs
Dangling in your slipstream or else
Taking effort to tuck away beneath your tail feathers.
You say this in the light of day
As I soar above and survey the fields,
But the sun it setting,
And I, too, wish to descend and rest.
I glide toward a middling pine bough,
Reach out to grasp it —
And sail past and below it,
Banking hard to keep from slamming into the ground,
For those are phantom talons
That will never wrap around a roosting branch,
Will never touch a place to sleep.
The sun sets again and the moon rises,
And my wings stumble on beneath the stars,
Looking for a perch that cannot be.
-----
As with many of the things I've written in the last year or so, the initial metaphor has been in my head for... Okay, I remember that I was still an MIT student, so literally half my life. I didn't plan for the poem to go where it did; I figured that, like most of my depressing pieces, it would end on a hopeful note. It bothered me enough to trigger a dissociative episode when it was read for the other workshoppers (It bothered me enough I couldn't do my own reading, too.) I'm aware that if I'd written it on almost any other night, it might have taken a different direction. That disturbs me. Scares me. Because it's true of anything I write. I have had the edge of that awareness before, but I don't look at it too closely, and now I know that it's because it's overwhelming to think that every time I write something, and it just feels right, every time I have that sureness that this is where the scene was "meant" to go, that it just fits together... it's a lie. If I had written that scene three days earlier, or two hours, or next year, it might go a completely different route, and that route would feel like it was the only possible route.
And in the middle of writing the above paragraph, I realize that I have written something very similar before. I don't remember if it was in another blog post, or in an email to a friend, but I had forgotten until right now that yes, I -have- stared down this realization before, have turned it over in my mind enough to put it into words, and then completely put it out of my thoughts. Which is a whole nother level of scary. What would I have done, what would my mind have done to me, if I'd recalled that memory when the poem was being read? -Did- I recall it then? Is that what freaked me out? I don't know. But I can look at it now, head-on, with discomfort but without turning away. I guess that's something.
-----
I am a footless bird, but no matter, you say:
You only need wings to fly.
How much better this is,
To be unhampered by useless limbs
Dangling in your slipstream or else
Taking effort to tuck away beneath your tail feathers.
You say this in the light of day
As I soar above and survey the fields,
But the sun it setting,
And I, too, wish to descend and rest.
I glide toward a middling pine bough,
Reach out to grasp it —
And sail past and below it,
Banking hard to keep from slamming into the ground,
For those are phantom talons
That will never wrap around a roosting branch,
Will never touch a place to sleep.
The sun sets again and the moon rises,
And my wings stumble on beneath the stars,
Looking for a perch that cannot be.
-----
As with many of the things I've written in the last year or so, the initial metaphor has been in my head for... Okay, I remember that I was still an MIT student, so literally half my life. I didn't plan for the poem to go where it did; I figured that, like most of my depressing pieces, it would end on a hopeful note. It bothered me enough to trigger a dissociative episode when it was read for the other workshoppers (It bothered me enough I couldn't do my own reading, too.) I'm aware that if I'd written it on almost any other night, it might have taken a different direction. That disturbs me. Scares me. Because it's true of anything I write. I have had the edge of that awareness before, but I don't look at it too closely, and now I know that it's because it's overwhelming to think that every time I write something, and it just feels right, every time I have that sureness that this is where the scene was "meant" to go, that it just fits together... it's a lie. If I had written that scene three days earlier, or two hours, or next year, it might go a completely different route, and that route would feel like it was the only possible route.
And in the middle of writing the above paragraph, I realize that I have written something very similar before. I don't remember if it was in another blog post, or in an email to a friend, but I had forgotten until right now that yes, I -have- stared down this realization before, have turned it over in my mind enough to put it into words, and then completely put it out of my thoughts. Which is a whole nother level of scary. What would I have done, what would my mind have done to me, if I'd recalled that memory when the poem was being read? -Did- I recall it then? Is that what freaked me out? I don't know. But I can look at it now, head-on, with discomfort but without turning away. I guess that's something.
