The other day, from an aside in a novel by Sigrid Nunez, I had an idea for a book of poems, which has never happened before. I was warned against such things, such concept albums. But I don’t trust the one who warned me.
The poet Rebecca Loudon recently wrote of discovering what her book of poems is about, and I trust her. I trust questions. I trust a place with seasons. I trust subway conductors and banks and police and pianos and teenagers and storms and soup. I trust a dollop of cream. I trust a story, every time.
I do trust myself and the stories inside me. I do trust myself to get those stories out, to tell them the way they are supposed to be told, to take my time. I don’t trust the world to listen. At least not until I speak louder and longer.
Did I trust the baseball stadium to hold last week? No, I did not.
In the later innings, when 57, 000 people were standing and stomping and heavy and drunk and the concrete stands of the upper deck, which are forty years old, began to sway--visibly, physically sway--and the boy near me, a stranger’s child, turned to me with wide eyes and your eyes looked the same?
No, I did not.
Did I trust that we would make it out alive?
Hell yes.
