Poetry Processes and the Utile

I tried to write poems this morning, but I feel sluggish.  I heard a news story about the Baton Rouge shooter driving from Dallas to Baton Rouge, and I thought about old slave routes from the upper South to the Mississippi delta, but that poem hasn't gelled.

I also tried to write the poem I conceived last week when I was swimming:  God as SCUBA diver, our world as the undersea landscape where divers want to stay, but they cannot.

But by then I was frustrated, and I put my notebook away.  I'll try again later this week.  In the meantime, let me read some poetry to try to fill my brain with something other than convention coverage.

Let me also remember moments of beauty this week, especially the full moon last night.  I watched it as I swam in the pool and had a conversation with my spouse about utiles, a way that Jeremy Bentham and other Utilitarians tried to measure happiness--a unit of happiness is a utile.  Before that swim, I had a delightful late afternoon catching up with neighborhood friends over nibbles and wine.  I am a lucky woman who received many utiles yesterday.

Let me remember that my back and hip pain is receding each day, but it's worse in the morning--that makes it tougher to write in the morning.  I will stay hopeful that I can sit at my computer for longer periods of time as we get closer to the week-end.  Let me go swim to try to loosen those muscles.