A good friend calls writing poems drafting , which I like a great deal. It is right; you are making a first draft, but it also sounds right. It sounds real and hard. You are measuring lines in pencil. You are cutting wood to planes. You are designing a fantasy home out of glass and wire and grass and twine and thorns between the bushes in the rose patch.
So I spent a little under two hours drafting a poem about birds, and life feels better. But still silent.
I have no music in the world. My i-pod died last week, and with it, all the songs I know. I couldn't fit CD's in the car when I came across the country; I left them at my parents' house. And now I am in California with only my car radio. It isn't terrible. I find myself filling in the gaps with songs in my head. I don't need to listen to music; it's all up here, a friend said years ago when we were painting his house, and now I understand. Instead of letting the music make the mood for me, I pick the music for my mood. I can stay on the chorus forever if I want to, like yesterday, walking across the cobblestones of campus, full of dread, the red leaves, the banana scent, the interview, the new teacher, the no sleep, my pink scarf, repeating in my head Bif Naked:
We are, we are, we are the lucky ones.
We are, we are, we are the lucky ones.
