living poetry

the poetry intensive was lovely, i kept going awol but i think that's the only way i can manage these functions now. spent three hours sunday morning walking the beach, it was like visiting an old friend. and it gave me a poem. when i read the poem to the group there was a gasp out of one woman and surprise by others, though i'm told it is a familiar union, the image that i used. but it was the act of doing it, the way one starts out on a sunday morning, fresh from bed, showers, lands at the beach and removes shoes. the water is chilly so i kept my flip flops on for about a half hour, then carried them, as shoes should be in hand at beaches. the image began to present itself early into my walk, as the walk progressed, it got fuller, cleaner. i interacted with the image. took photos. found myself conversing with the image and finally shouting,

i got it, i got it.

i don't know if somewhere someone knows what is to be written. but when i finally caught on, the images began to fall into place in my mind. i wasn't thinking about a poem per se, i could just feel images lining up, falling into a particular cadence.

it was, perhaps the most conscious my subconscious process has been, ever. maybe that is where i'm headed now. to a complete consciousness, because i can see poems overlaying my days, like an architect's sketches. i see all kinds of possibility. but none of it is complete, or even concrete at that point. i just see an overlay, like webbing, from scenes, images, words. to something that looks like a poem.

when i turned around to make it back to my car sunday, i wasn't sure i could write that poem. that i would capture it. this is always the question. the issue at hand. it's one thing to see a poem, to hear it, to know it's waiting but another thing entirely to catch it living on the page. to elicit gasps from women.

so i'm approaching my car, i notice how my body began to veer away from the shoreline and toward the seawall stairs by my vehicle. in this realignment, i found the final line of my poem. it redirected my gaze and the images continued to play out before me, life happening, and i heard what would be the final line.

someone asked me once,

did you write about it yet

no,

i said,

it's all words and images to me. i don't have enough distance from it yet.

perhaps it's because that was referencing interactions between people, which seem to take more perspective to make sense of. this, though, was no less important, but the immediacy, the presence. i was walking in that poem. living that poem as it was being written in my mind, and was able to go home and capture it on the page.

i don't understand how it works or why. i'm just grateful, every day, that i get to do this.

i thought when poetry was so much in my mind that i was living poetry, but now, this is something utterly new.

and i went back to the retreat, and wrote it down. called my best friend and said,

i don't know if i got it, i think i got it.

and after i read it, she was silent.

no poetry critiques, no commentary.

and i knew, i got it.