My mind likes to tell stories. It likes to take two plus two and end up with sixteen or thirty-nine. By this, I mean I can start writing with one detail and watch words unfold a whole life. As I’ve said before, I don’t mess with this process. My job is to stay out of my mind’s way while it works. And then afterwards do the editing.
So if you’re a neighbour of mine reading this, don’t worry. This poem is not true. Yes, I can see the lit window of your kitchen. But not these details.
Here’s the first draft of today’s poem:
Watching you eat dinner
Call it out of the rain: a lit window obscured
by air’s wet breath floating above
the half-seen earth. I see red
tonight, see plaid settling itself across
your back as you spoon dinner
on to plates. Or I imagine
the plates, Thursday night ones, almost
the end of the week and you’re on
the rough ones, edges chipped, dish
washer full and you forgot to hit
on before you left this morning, kids
cranky with the wind’s gusting
cough. An arm stretches out, not
yours, pours from a jug the colour
of our night sky spotted with
the drops of a thousand clouds then reaches
up and pulls the blind down.
Only leaves left to watch, their wet
droop blown out of their control.
I turn away.
Editing this was easy. The middle part was so sloppy and talkative, it was almost like overhearing a conversation. That’s fine on a bus but not good in a poem. So my first job was to make the middle match my opening and closing images.
That meant omitting details from the story. But then, it isn’t a story. It’s a poem, an important distinction. In a poem, I want to use fewer words to convey a picture, words that persuade the reader to fill in the blanks themselves. So my long section about the plates and the dishwasher becomes simply ‘time for chipped edges,’ an image which allows for a double meaning.
Despite the first draft’s obvious flaws, I liked the line break: ‘I see red/tonight …’ The ambiguity of that hanging ‘red’ allows the reader, by the end of the poem, to question whether the narrator was referring to the shirt or her anger.
I also deliberately left ‘not’ on another line ending for the punch it gives to the narrator’s shock at seeing someone else in a place she clearly believes is hers. And finally, I was pleased with the tree I was watching in the rain as I wrote this poem, its heavy wet leaves blown out of control by the gusting wind. Out of control is how I wanted my narrator to feel by the end of this poem without actually saying so. The tree allows me to hang the phrase there for the reader to make the connection.
Current Version:
Watching You
Call it out of the rain: a lit window
obscured by air’s wet breath floating
above the sodden earth. I see red
tonight, see plaid settled across
your back as you spoon dinner
on to plates. It’s Friday night, time
for chipped edges, kids
whirling with the wind. An arm
stretches out, not
yours, pours from a jug the colour
of our night sky spotted with
the drops of a thousand clouds. Then
reaches to pull the blind down, leaving only
trees to watch, their heavy droop blown
out of control. I turn away.
I’m not the only one with story issues. Robert Kroetsch has written an excellent piece in the new magazine Eighteen Bridges. You’ll enjoy ‘Is This A Real Story Or Did You Make It Up?’
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