You Whisper Chaucer to Me

This morning, I read Kelli Russell Agodon's tweet.  She posts "Sleep," a poem by Brian Quirk, and then she says, "Let's write more sleep/goodnight poems...we need to."

I immediately thought of my spouse, who can still quote the first twelve lines of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales--yes, in Middle English.  How do I know this?  He did it just the other night.  And thus, a first line came to me:  "You whisper Chaucer to me as we drift off to sleep."

My poem goes to fictional territory, with rocking chairs and colicky babies, which we don't have, and have never had.  Well, we have had rocking chairs, but not babies.

It may become a poem series.  My brain has gone in multiple directions, which I've written down, but I'm not sure I'm writing one poem.

Or maybe I should try.  I too often break my ideas into smaller poems, and my spouse has occasionally suggested that I go deeper.

My spiritual director said something similar when we last met in December.  She said that she often feels that we're on the brink of going deeper, but then I back away.  How can we tell that we're on the brink?  Tears come to my eyes, my voice wavers, and then I change the subject or shift the focus away from me.

Back to poetry writing--I am thinking of Lucille Clifton, when asked why her poems were so short, she said something about childcare duties meant she wrote in shorter units, but she was able to write longer poems as the babies grew up.  I feel similarly, that I only have a small amount of time to dive deeper, whether it's into poems or my inner life or my relationships or . . .

Still, in most aspects of my creative life, I remember what can be done even in small chunks of time.  I sketch for 5-7 minutes most days.  Some days I do more, but often not.  As I look at what I've done over the past 5 years, I'm amazed at how my drawing skills have improved.

But more important, I'm seeing the world in different ways.  I'm paying attention in ways that I wouldn't, if I wasn't trying to sketch or to write poems or to know myself deeply.