In lieu of a composed poem, one of my mentors invited me to write down a dozen words off the top of my head. I scribbled
- fawn
- highway
- gardenia
- earthworm
- relent
- independence
- soil
- refrain
- reply
- repay
- reverse
- reform
I buried the list for a few days with the intention of using it as raw material for a second exercise where I’d string the words together, but upon exhuming it I recoiled from my predilection for becoming more abstract rather than more particular as I went along, as though my brain were on crutches. I had begun my list with a narrative of some sort (fawn killed on highway, becomes food for gardenias), then found myself on a dead-end siding, maybe because I was groping for an re- word that never came. (“Restaurant” might have offered interesting possibilities, as in “The fawn is the earthworm’s restaurant.”)
Using the full list was out of the question, but, like a toddler talking to his shoes, the words called “Work with me here!” I tried. “Refrain” appealed since the noun and verb summon each other; I keep thinking that reform, reply, reverse are not impossible and will have to meditate on that. Meanwhile, deer don’t like gardenias, but if my garden is any measure, they are fond of tulips. Since lists always want to appear in threes, this iconoclast shelved five items in a row at the end: oh the luxury of it, the burgeoning of nature, the going over the top! Yet dark implications, not so far removed from my original leaning toward that poor fawn on the highway, prevail:
After Rain
The earthworm’s song to the soil,
The tulip’s to the worm,
The fawn’s to the tulip
Break the morning news.
Daybreak urges the worm to hurry,
The fawn to refrain from what forage she found,
The complacent tulip to a shyer grace.
The soil’s refrain informs their singing
Because she merely coddles the rain,
The tulip, the fawn, the worm, the morning
And waits.