Little Poems Everywhere
It’s National Poetry Month and I’ve just returned home after a week of travel in Sedona, then Denver. My week in Sedona with friends had moments that nestle in my memory like stanzas in a poem–a hike to caves where sun patterns cast shadows around the irregular doorway, a scramble to see rock formations called Baby Bell and Cathedral Rock, and a visit at sunset to the Airport Vortex where fifty or so people gathered to watch a giant orange sun lower in a gray-streaked sky. Friends are another kind of poem, especially the kind of friends I haven’t seen for months but it feels as if no time has lapsed when we again get together. These friends have always been easy to travel with and this time was no different, though now we live thousands of miles apart.
Waiting for the train to get to the Denver Airport, I met C, an 88 year-old woman. She was with a couple that we assumed were family. She used a cane but was otherwise lively. Sitting in back of her on the train, I came to find out that the couple were strangers who helped her navigate which train to board. I also found out that she was en route to the airport to go to a literacy convention in Texas the next day. This led to a discussion about her life’s work in literacy and a recommendation of books. We agreed to help her to her airport hotel where she invited us in and we learned more—her long marriage and the death of her husband a little over a year ago, her nonprofit devoted to literacy, her travel and residency in places like the Sudan, South Korea, Turkey, and Guam, her eventual college degree that included a Master’s after an early dislike of higher education. As she put in, her husband helped her to become a scholar. C was traveling alone, depending on the generosity of strangers but also capable enough to use services to help her navigate a world designed for the able-bodied. She had a smartphone and with help had downloaded the train ticket on an app. To say meeting C was a highlight of an otherwise uneventful trip home would be an understatement. She was the best part of the drudge of travel—crowded terminals, frenzied people, and the ugliness of shops all offering the same selection of magazines and snacks. The flight was turbulent and the pilot announced that the unstable air would last for 20 minutes (half of the flight) but it calmed down after 10, thankfully. I am a nervous flier. Losing a friend in a plane crash at age 12 shaped me. I didn’t fly until age 23 and most every flight after that was a challenge until my father died in 2005, and we flew regularly to handle my mother’s needs and later her subsequent move. I fly often—for book launches and writing events, for travel to places I long to see. I never like the process of getting there but I always love disembarking in a new place, a poem or narrative awaiting me in the architecture, the weather, people I will briefly meet.
In South America in 2019, we met a couple who had spent years traveling the world. They bought a world ticket and planned out destinations and a daily budget. In March, we met up with them again in Seattle where I was attending a writing conference. They had just spent four months in New Zealand and after a brief stop home, they were headed to Europe. We have talked about this way to approach life, realizing that we have neither the budget nor the inclination to travel constantly. Part of the lifestyle intrigues me. What would it be like to awaken in a new place every day? Could I step out of daily routines? I read an article last week about routines and writing. Prolific writers have a routine. I know that a daily writing habit leads to better writing yet a part of me shuns routine. I can be convinced to take a spontaneous trip or an afternoon picnic in the mountains. I resolve to give my early mornings up to writing. This is a resolution I’ve made and broken and will try again. Writing is portable and I long to awaken in new places, seeing cliffs and the wild sea, tasting a cuisine I can’t yet imagine.
It is National Poetry Month and some writers are pledging to write a poem a day. I’ve already lost two days and since I also write fiction, I’m thinking of stories I want to write or the novel I wrote but never published. I will not be writing a poem a day but I will vow to make each day a kind of homage to poetry by living consciously. That has become overused so I’ll explain. Conscious living is, to me, a pause. Right now I’m looking out my window at the early morning sun over the mountains. The sky is gray with tatters of clouds, and a few cars make their way down one visible road. It is quiet. Most are sleeping or on their way to work, a job they love or a job they hate. I have loved many of my jobs though I hated some. An ambulance with flashing lights just went by though it’s far enough away that I cannot hear the siren. My worse jobs were drudgery–counting spark plugs in a hardware department, serving ice cream and burgers, filing records at a hospital. The best jobs allowed reinvention which is why I enjoy teaching. I have an online poetry class beginning this week. Each student will bring a story and each will be from a different geography. I will learn from them even as I guide them through readings and writing ideas.
Here is my wish for you for National Poetry Month: go outside every day. Find something you don’t usually notice, a tuft of dry grass, a puddle, a shoot pushing its way through the dirt, a shy animal. Take a different route to work or to the store or go on a hike to a place you don’t yet know. Talk to a stranger and learn their story as I did with C. Renew old friendships and make new ones. There are people with stories you need to hear. We are all here so briefly. The impression we make on others is a kind of poem. The struggling sun is a poem. Your hand holding a coffee cup is a poem. Today, I brewed my perfect coffee and drank it in a cup given to me by a writers organization in Northampton, Massachusetts where I offered a workshop some years ago. The cup reminds me of friends who live there. The coffee reminds me of my family who gifted me a wonderful espresso maker and grinder last June. And these simple moments are stanzas in the poem of my life. Go find yours.
Literary Imaginings by Lisa C. Taylor 
Well said, thanks.