NaPoWriMo

It has been years since I tried writing a poem a day for NaPoWriMo.  This isn't a confession because I don't feel guilty about it in the slightest.  I am proud of my past efforts and I am thrilled to see so many people attempt to write a poem a day for an entire month.  And it isn't like there hasn't been a whole lot of material /fodder/pop culture happenings to inspire poetry, but this isn't my yea . . . again.

I am coming down off the tail end of completing a manuscript which hopefully will be out in the world by summer, and I am not writing poems.  I haven't written a poem in months.  Still not a confession---just a statement.  This is just my pattern.  I write steadily until I have a project in mind, then everything turns to that project.  After I turn my writing attentions to that project, everything else dies.  I write and write and re-write and write more towards that one thing.  After it's over, I have no writing energy left.  I literally have to re-learn how to write poems of a different voice, subject matter, and/or reflection.  It happens every time.  What has taken me years to learn is to ignore this particular kind of emptiness and silence. 

I used to panic.  I used to scare myself into writing terrible poems because I thought if I didn't keep writing I would lose what little talent I had and I would never write another good poem.  I am not saying my "good" poems are really that great.  I am just saying my poems during those times were/are particularly bad.  Well, it has finally started to stick.  I have learned to accept the fact I am not a consistent writer of poems.  I do not write on a steady schedule.  I am not an aggregate poet, in that  I have a batting average when it comes to poems.  I love all my finished poems even if editors hate them all.  I have come to accept that I have forgotten how to write new poems, and it will be some time before that happens.

What's more, with every passing day I am learning to live with the sort of poet I am and the kind of poet I will never be.  Rather than going into any of that, I will simply provide you a poem to read.  It's a poem I like, which means it's good enough to share.


Spring rain---
This cold morning
lasting forever