starting something new in the morning

As usual, I started writing a poem... I'm not sure I should post it when it's hardly gotten started, but... I kind of want to anyway. I hope everyone's been well. I feel almost as though I've been walking on the moon for the past month and haven't made contact with the earth I know... This is hardly true, but it's my feeling of the instant.

This morning, I woke and immediately started writing (in the new journal that Megumi gave me--thank you, thank you, thank you. I love the way the paper feels under my pen--much smoother and more refreshing than the paper of my old journal). This felt like a break-through for me. To be honest, I've had little motivation to get myself to writing lately... there have been so many things to distract me from what part of life I rather enjoy and what I need to keep at... This morning meant a lot to me--pushing aside my desire to stay in sleep, I wrote:

*
I keep listening for sounds upstairs--
for little feet bounding along the hardwood floors.
I keep listening for what could be
the first squeals of morning,
but everything here is still.

A little thumping on the cieling never harmed
anyone. The rush of water in the pipes along
my walls, the tarantula sounds of creeping
within the vents. These sounds
are all of morning, noon and night;
and I want to listen and hold my body still,
so all the stillness in the walls and ceiling and stairs
will burst with the beating of little hands
on a drum upstairs.

Even the rhythm of my own lungs in the stillness
throbs along waves of wanting for the walls
to whisper, at least. They are all testing
the silence--to see how far
they can take it away from me.

Until now, I have learned to stand
along shingles of a tar-roofed shed,
poising my body to leap and fall
into a thin layer of gravel. This
is my backyard--and this sounds of chinking
stones and sore heals.
But, I jump again. Again,
making the chinks clip louder and louder
to beat against the silence of
my own blood, which isn't much
for silence, afterall.

Until now, I have learned to separate
the tongue from the mind--
enough to know they are two
and they are separate. You can keep one still,
while the other runs circles and cartwheels around silence.
This can easily tip the other way, as well.
And if the walls can really
speak, as peaple are wont to
claim they can, what are they thinking now--
in the stillness of this morning,
when even the floors wait with me for a sound?
*

To be continued...