Today’s poem was sparked by a line from a poem by Patrick Lane: ‘I have wanted to bear witness to the past’. This often happens when I’m reading poetry, but it’s rare that I find myself writing around the inspiring line instead of out of it.

Mind you, what came first was simply six brief lines. More a fragment looking for a home. It took two years for me to finish working on this. At Banff, Don had recommended that I go back through my discards and look for the good lines, the ones that rang true. This sextet did, though it took a while, as you can see below, before I found its proper setting.

1st:
‘I have wanted to bear witness to the past’
Patrick Lane

You turn the corner and I can’t think why
it’s not the way home, but I’m afraid
to ask, reveal another empty space. It’s
not Alzheimer’s, just my head accustomed
to losing time, throwing an afternoon away the way
a child throws a tantrum, block after block.

2nd:
Reading Between the Lines

I never know how hands move, what quivers they see
in grass that urges them forward. The sounds I hear may not
disturb you. But I have wanted to bear witness
to the past. Sometimes, when you turn
the corner, I can’t remember why. I know
it’s not the way home, but I’m afraid to ask, reveal
another empty space. It’s not Alzheimer’s, just my head accustomed
to losing time, throwing an afternoon away the way
a child throws a tantrum, block after block. I’ve always loved
the big bang of fireworks, the way the gold chrysanthemums echo
in my breast bone. And those silver sizzlers. They light
the sky with a glory I keep forgetting.

For the draft above, I started writing about time (though admittedly, I wasn’t explicit about whose hands I was referring to in the first line). It was an easy fit at first to slip my sextet in, but by the end, I was pretty sure I’d gone astray. The connections I wanted to make were too tenuous to hold.

For the next draft, I expanded on the theme of time, so it became clearer to the reader what I was talking about. But I abandoned my expansion of the theme of electricity at the end. I still could not get that concept to work.

3rd:
Reading Between the Lines

I check my watch every few minutes in case time has leapt
without me, leaving me in its familiar ditch. I’ve missed
buses watching its face, not hearing the message
its hands wanted to convey. I never know how
those hands move, what quivers they see
in grass that urges them forward. Often I have wanted to bear witness
to the past* [Patrick Lane] Yet sometimes, when you turn
the corner, I can’t remember why. I know
it’s not the way home, but I’m afraid to ask, reveal
another empty space. It’s not Alzheimer’s, just my head accustomed
to losing time, throwing an afternoon away the way
a child throws a tantrum, block after block. I remember
the big bang of fireworks, the way gold chrysanthemums echo
in my breast bone. And those silver sizzlers. The ones that light
the sky with a glory that’s hard to forget. I know the sounds I hear
may not disturb you. Perhaps you don’t smell electricity
in the house’s hot rooms.

For the current draft, which has been before Don’s fierce expert eyes, I changed the voice. I’ve been doing this with many poems lately, noticing how much quiet power a poem gains when it has that displacement.

I also did a tight edit, deleting all wordy phrases (‘leaving me in its familiar ditch’) and slowing down the mood of my verbs (changing ‘leapt’ to ‘slipped’, ‘missed’ to ‘have passed’, ‘hearing’ to ‘spoke’) so that the poem is ready for the fog by the time we reach it. ‘Throws a tantrum’ is the only glimpse of rage in this poem and it provides an example of what’s spoken of in the second to last line.

Current Version:
Reading Between the Lines

You check your watch every few minutes knowing time
might have slipped without you. Buses have passed
while its face spoke quietly beneath your cuff. You’ve never seen
how its hands move, what quivers they sense
in grass that urge them forward. Often you have wanted
to bear witness to the past. Yet sometimes when the car turns
the corner, you can’t remember why. You know
it’s not the way home but you’re afraid to ask, reveal
another empty space. It’s not Alzheimer’s, just your head
accustomed to losing time, throwing an afternoon away
the way a child throws a tantrum, block after block. Today’s
fog is a palimpsest on the city’s surface, rewriting
the contents of windows, the kind of glimpses you sometimes
allow yourself to see. Fog makes a day lovely.

I’m still not totally convinced by the segue to the fog in this poem. We’ll see if it undergoes another revision.

Today’s poem was written in response to a rather wonderful discovery I made a few weeks ago: there’s a Lake Gillian on Baffin Island. Best of all, the lake has a wonderful shape, almost human. Satellite imagery on Google Maps shows a mixture of hills and shoreline surrounding the turquoise water. I showed it to my husband and he immediately said I should write a poem to it.

I did, but it turned out to be such a bad poem, I’m embarrassed to show it to you. However, that’s what this website is for, so here it is:

First version:

She is spread like a lake, the map showing
the rough edges to those who would walk
her boundaries. All areas are open water
but many could use portage’s weight to hold
them down or they’ll drown like she
did, a body floating at the bottom
of a body. Only the most careful
of divers can reach her, after having
their hearts checked, the water that far
north is the kind of cold that stops
a pulse within a single plunge. Don’t wear
a mask, though, her face is already
hard to see under the tenderness
of algae. Though the simpleness
of a search on the web that holds
us all will yield her name, she cannot
be found.

I don’t edit all the poems I write. Some speak to me immediately and I work at them for days. Others catch my eye later and I’ll go back to them and see what I can do to redeem them if they have good bones. And some just sit there waiting to have the odd good phrase lifted when needed. They are consigned to what I affectionately call my crap file.

This poem got to live solely because of its origin. I winced every time I caught sight of it. Finally I decided I had to fix it. But how? When I’m stuck, I’ll often research what I’m writing about. Google and Wikipedia are old friends. I’ll spend time reading until a phrase or image catches my imagination and shows me how to move forward.

This time, Google got me started. I spent time peering at my lake in satellite view, examining its contours as closely as I could, poring over topographical maps that I found online so I could find where the cliffs are, where the shores slope down… and I was in and rewriting the poem. I stopped once to find out what birds nested around the lake and then chose only one to incorporate, being careful not to be obvious about my research.

While I rewrote, I had to think about what I wanted to convey with this poem. The first version was painfully obvious: ooh look, I’m using a lake as a metaphor. I wanted this version to be much more subtle. That meant changing the beginning. I now start with the lake and move to an image of shoulders, cold shoulders. But I also show hope: “There is open water here” – this person is not totally frost-bitten even if the face is buried. I played with these images very carefully, wanting to convey a troubled personality, someone distant but still reachable if people would take the time. I wanted to point out that she offers a map even as she lies drowned in her pain.

All this took many, many drafts. I’m still not totally happy with the result. The next areas I want to work on are this line: ‘north on the shield being the kind to stop’ which I find too wordy, and the last line which I think is still missing a certain something. But I’m getting there.

Current Version:

The Transparent Life

You offer a map showing the lake’s
rough edges to those who might walk
its boundaries, find where the cliffs
are, where the soft swaths slope,
frost-bitten, to a slide
of ice green shoulders. There is open
water here, places a murre could land, uttering
its harsh short cry as a single egg
is born. But also the need
for portage’s weight lest a rock thrust
cause another to drown, a body floating
at the bottom of a body. How to find it? Only
the most careful could try after having
their hearts checked, the water that far
north on the shield being the kind to stop
a pulse with a single plunge. Already,
the face is buried under time’s
tender tracing. Already, algae hold
skin to bone to sand. But so many turn
away even from the looking. It would take
a trek and they prefer warmer shores.