how to write again after winter

Look at your journal frequently

carry it around

move it from surface to surface

set a pen beside it   a pretty good pen

not the best pen

pick them up put them down pen and journal

decorate the journal   a sloth sticker, a Texas state park ghost buffalo

put a very small journal in your pocket to carry at all times

and a tiny pencil

read read read read read read read

become weak and jealous

because you love some other’s poems so much

keep reading until you are over yourself and focus

on loving those other’s poems wholly, without shame or jealousy

occasionally write on a scrap of paper like a receipt or the inside of a new sock wrapper

or squeezed unreadably into the margins of a printed article you read about writing

a word or a line that stirred inside you like rocks in a tumbler

that you might want to quote later or use as an epigraph

or title  

lose and

find these scraps and occasionally ponder those words

this can go on indefinitely

buy some colorful little sticky tabs

tab favorite pages in some books

believe you have things to say about the book’s ideas

or the grace of a line

like a poem you might start

and sometimes try to find on that tabbed page the stirring

bit though you won’t and this can go on indefinitely

try to not listen to your cat who prefers you

to be in a position where you can’t write

when he lies on you and otherwise

says nothing demands nothing except

not writing  

lifting the pen bothers him

think quietly stilly writing a whole thing in your head

this can go on indefinitely       this trying not to yet

obeying the cat

even now he covers your journal with his long milkweed body

his paws soft as desert primroses limp and white

so you listen to your cat

he chirps

this can go on–this now this now this now indefinitely

summer is arriving which is to say springs’ puddles become thunderclouds

the towhees make a constant racket

the iris smell of grapes and root beer (purple and brown)

the tulips are your first kisses long faded

crab apple blossoms litter your floor like of course snow

reject the tired cliches but still

you want to tell someone

when the cat feels you pick up your pen and try

to write what you want to tell and the cat begins to leave

you put your pen down

because after all he is the reason you are sitting down at all

when he leaves you pick up your pen

when he comes back you put it down again

this can go on indefinitely

your brain gets way ahead of your pen since you’re not writing

and when the cat returns

chirping and opening his silky throat to your hand

purring with a healing rough rumble

as if he were a mercury outboard engine gurgling beneath a lake

you want to tell someone

and of how your children are grown

your partner is patient

so what’s the problem?

a little shame opens in you like a hole in the ground

maybe just a small hole like the door to a cement ant colony or

a dark lily you like to breathe

do not go there     do not breathe that

not that cave or dark door or flower

or wait maybe you can pick up your pen and write about that

or list potential titles for your book in progress

didn’t you put a few on the margin of a Nature Conservancy magazine

or a 2 year old New Yorker?

and wonder if titles count as writing

Quench.   Fire Season.  Ghost House.

The Feral Lady Reflects on Gertrude Stein’s Portrait

this can go on indefinitely

titles      the cat’s return

and then a text bleeps

your phone always nearby witnessing

google memory is too full

you must delete

clean

pen down     phone up

a job dings in

editing

maybe you won’t try to write until that job is done

or until the days grow shorter

or colder

or the spring’s puddles fill with lightning and thunder and breakage

but the day is tender as a cat’s purr and his throat

you want to tell someone about this

you could pick up the pen

you could tell someone

your journal or your sister or a stranger

how perhaps writing isn’t as necessary as you thought

or it is

you pick up the pen and the towhees do not stop speaking

and the cat is asleep curled in a chair now

and the day is long then the soft evening

the sun’s purr   the moon’s silky throat

dark star in the farthest sky

you want to tell someone about this

you open your journal

pick up your good enough pen

begin to write

and the evening is as sweet as it ever was

as kind to you

as patient as you have been

and you think about how later you might write about a whiskey you call Truth Serum or tequila smooth as a cat’s throat–in light of your topic, how to write–or about the best pens, or how now the journal is open, the pen’s in your hand, then it’s touching the page

its first mark a tiny blue planet