APRIL is poetry month. How lovely to have an entire month named after Me and my Profession. I'm participating in a poetry postcard project with fellow writers in Kundiman (an organization for Asian American poets). The challenge: through the entire month of April, write a new poem on a postcard every day and send it the next name on the list, flooding mailboxes with my genius verse. Mailmen will weep! Mountains will move! Hearts will throb with inspiration! Meanwhile, my own mailbox will be bursting with gorgeous lyric and sultry song. My mailman will finally believe that not only 1800-PET-MEDS and student loan companies are after me. Nay, I am sung to by Orpheus himself, by all the Muses and their daughters, by the most talented Asian-American bards of our time! (PS: You don't have to be a poet to do something everyday for a month. What will you do for 10 minutes every day to bring joy or change into your life?)
Postcard #1
Every day is every day is every day.
I'm thinking of too much
at once. Of an hour lost in a station
where engines idled in the tracks,
where fume and perfume and goodbye
fought for air. Every day is night, every night
another morning. I've walked into this season,
this ocean before. I didn't know I was weary
until you asked. I won't speak of flowers
or weather, of which enough has been said.
I'll spend most of my life
softening into forgiveness. The task
has chosen me. A fortuneteller
once told me to listen
as a whale listens
for pitches too high, too low
for most ears to comprehend.
I'm swimming to the source.
I'm holding my breath.
