William Topaz MacGonagall

A long time ago I used to write poetry. None of it remarkable, most of it not very good. There were no Tay Bridge Disasters in the lot, but needless to say, I was no Keats. I lacked the patience and discipline to write when there was no visceral prompt, no muse whispering in my ear. And on those occasions when Calliope did descend and move me to commit my verses to paper, I was too lazy to go back and properly revise and refine the words that earlier poured from my pen like so much water from a fountain. For example, I wouldn’t take the time to go back and remove awkward and unnecessary similes, like so much garbage from the roadside. So even though I still write with some degree of frequency, I stay away from the poems.

Earlier this week however, I discovered, while organizing My Documents, a poem I had toyed with while working as a Data Reporting Specialist. On one of my lunch breaks, presumably during some early-infant sleep-deprived haze, since I don’t really remember ever composing it, I took a phrase from an email my mother wrote. The communiqué involved some familial medical difficulties that at the time were rather dire, but from which my relative recovered successfully. I took some liberties and made up my own story based on the letter. It’s all totally fictional. I just loved the deceptive exposition of my mother’s introductory line, and so used the same line to start this poem. Perhaps with this poem, I will set my sights and really whittle it down to its essence. Or expand it, who knows? Perhaps, I’ll just let it lay the way it spilled onto the page. Either way, I don’t think it’s terrible.

Things I’ve Learned

Sweetie-
things I've learned;
Autumn is actually a woman about our age,
53, whose son just graduated
high school and he is traveling this year.
He’s got a backpack and a rail-pass and I must admit I’m jealous.
She moved here from Charleston and decided to stay when the first snowflake hit the ground.
Single mom for a long while, her field is Conflict Resolution.
Autumn thought she had a place lined up to stay and thought
she had a job with a guy who's a bigwig in the Con. Res. business,
but he balked after she got here.
They had quite a nasty argument.
I think perhaps they had been sleeping together.
I’ve decided I like the idea of skiing much more than the act.
Autumn took me to a small slope and I nearly broke my ankle.
I felt awfully lonely here in the mountains, waiting for winter to come.
Rivers sometimes look like they run uphill here.
Wouldn’t that be great? If something like a river
that has been forever charging downhill towards inevitability
could all of a sudden swing back up and ascend,
hinting at something not so final?
It’s just an optical illusion though. The roads and the rocks play tricks.
I will see my sister tomorrow.
She will only have one breast left.
I think she may try to adopt.
I hope Autumn can stay around with her once I’ve left.
She is a bit eccentric and unpredictable,
but when she’s here, she’s grand.