The poet William Stafford
wrote a poem every day
(show off...overachiever)
said he stayed in bed
to let whatever happened
become his song,
not to hide but to seek
(must be nice
to recline,
privileged and sublime,
on the Muse's fleshy thighs)
A poem a day?
Rumi did better
ejaculating poems
in a frenzy of self love.
A poem a day?
Poetry as another thing
I have to do?
Yet there is so much
I leave unsaid.
The critic says
I will never have the time
to revise my life
as it is,
let alone to say it
in an elegantly crafted way.
A poem a day...
I long to try...
I ask Emily and Edna
to bless me,
Ask the Charlottes,
Bronte and Gilman Perkins,
to release me
from the drag of daily life.
One act of creation a day,
to move, genesis by genesis,
closer to the luminescence
of my own godhead.
Marguerite,
search history
and help me find the poetry
in everyday life,
the ancient rime and rhythms,
a heart beat ages old
still pulsing through the centuries
pumping lifeblood
from Sappho to me.
There are lays I've learned
life will not allow me,
the Muse may occasionally beat the drum
but She never, never beats the rugs.
Unwritten poems furrow my brow
then drift away like the dust kitties
my lackadaisical housekeeping
cannot keep in check.
Making love songs,
I sing my son to sleep,
caressing his hair
to the unpublished but oft sung tune
of my wild primordial love.
I will not ask Sylvia Plath,
her instinct for words was not enough
to let her survive the crushing mundanity
of another load of laundry,
or another sink full of dishes.
I am too much a vessel for tenderness.
So let the laundry become my lines for today,
swaying in the breezing, lifting clean arms
to heaven, beseeching the wind for life.
Spirits rise, hearts fill,
Look....
Sharon Olds laughs out loud
to see Richard Wilbur
dancing with clothesline angels.
First published in the Stolen Island Review, 1997
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