How I wanted to end a long day: at a cafe with a big mug of latte, a Toblerone shortbread cookie, and some music in the background. My brain was still echoing with work when I drove to ground school, it was that sort of day. I decided to postpone my PSTAR exam, but attended the preamble so I would have more information with which to prepare. I drove back home two hours earlier than usual to park myself at a cafe and unwind enough to write a poem.
I haven’t written a poem since high school English, when I got graded on it. (That’s not counting the silly limericks with David online.)
It took me a long time to write it, simply because I’m so out of practice (although truthfully I was never in practice) and the fact that I’m a chronic revisionist who can never achieve an acceptable degree of satisfaction without rounds and rounds of editing. I blame my old boss for passing along this nasty habit (Mister M knows who I’m kidding about). But in the past few months or so, I’ve been willing myself to embark in new directions without the comfort of previous firsthand experience because I want to feel personal growth. Where I feel progress is best charted is not in the territory I’ve already explored but in the execution of new ideas. Because I think now is as good a time as any; I definitely wasn’t ready last year.
Every day I come home feeling spent because everything is new and my job takes a lot out of me. I’m not complaining, I know it comes with the territory, the new territory.
The poem took me more than two hours to write. At one point I was ready to throw in the towel and ask Socar to help me, because she’s a wordsmith. She did me a huge favour by writing a poem for David, a favour I asked the day he was transferred to hospice. But I plodded on, wincing now and then. See, my problem is that my vocabulary goes out the flaming window when it comes to poetry. Seriously, I have to mentally cycle through the alphabet and it makes me feel like a grade schooler. Phooey. I can’t tell you how many drafts I made.
Anyway, I emailed off the latest version, hoping for some overnight inspiration. Maybe it’ll come to me in my sleep. My plan is to read it out loud tomorrow at my bereavement group. My hope is that if I read it out loud to them, it will give the poem a sound. And if the sound rings true, I will know it is finished.
The poem is for a daughter who lost her father. I know one day that will be me.