A Poem A Day
with two friends and the US Postal Service.
First I was here, and then I wasn’t.
Sometimes a pause leads to paralysis. Like standing on a cliff’s edge getting ready to jump into water — if I stop to think, I linger longer, and the pain of standing stuck is epic. To return to this new-to-me space where I spent more time not here than here, I would like to share a project that I’ve embarked on with one, and then two friends beginning in April of this year.
The rules are simple: write a quick poem each day and send it through the post.
But we break or bend or change those simple rules all the time. Today I wrote six quick poems around one word. Other times I catch up on missed days. Sometimes the poem is a drawing. Sometimes it isn’t quick. I just received the last of Katie’s August poems in mid-September, and Rachel, well, her exquisite poems go on for pages and pages and are thinly disguised essays that are a different kind of every day.
I am grateful for every envelope that finds its way into my mailbox – and perhaps grater-ful for the rule bending and breaking and changing which inevitably leads to the unexpected.
Before this project, I found myself, in all of my journaling, to want to capture everything that happens in a day, which I know is impossible, and more, why?! But I kept burrowing in and burrowing in and the excess was harrowing. These little moment-catchings end up preserving so much more of a day in their lessness.
I barely know what a poem is, so sharing them publicly feels impostery, but then again, there is so much in the world, who will notice?
Family Secrets
A boy and his dog —
both gone.
A photograph from
the family drawer —
On the back:
“This is Popeye when a pup.”
Nothing about the boy.
12 September 2023
No. 77
Oh this writing--the poem-a-day-writing itself-- yes(!) but you are so masterful at capturing the unknowingness and wonder of what you (we) walk through (the days) into a sort of glimpse into the known. And I feel like the first paragraph is a model for artists who express/disguise guilt for not being in their social realms with some form of excuse but you express something more honest down throughout this piece and open the space itself as though it is the stranger to get known/you have yet to know---its all poetry to me. Beautiful. Can live in your pocket?
A while back, you wrote about being a starter, and have often alluded to not necessarily being tied to the finishing. I hear you!
I start writings in my head. Often multiple times a day, and sometimes the same, or edited versions of one writing, continue along for a couple of days. But I very rarely write them into being.
These short but twinkly poems of yours are inspiring me to *maybe* start writing on paper, in one of the many books I’ve made in which to start a something... *maybe*
I LOVE this project Margaux