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I do something for myself every single morning of my life. I take a poem outside and read it aloud, as soon as I can.
When I’m at home and it isn’t raining outside, I put on my robe and a beautiful scarf one of my son’s brought me from Peru and me and Boo, my dog, go and sit at the table outside. I take a moment to smell the dew, check on the fruit trees and oh, all those weeds and tasks that need attending, and the rusted shed with the shredded tarp and I watch the birds coming to and fro to the bird feeder and the trees and bushes, especially the willows in my neighbor’s yard. I don’t really know what Boo does, I don’t watch him but he does usually hit some of the same marks daily – chasing the squirrel who loves to fuck with him by running the perimeter of the yard, stopping every now and then to make Boo bark even more, running behind the tree to eat the tall grass and god knows what else, brushing against the rosemary bush, sniffing, peeing, pooping. And then he sits beside me and I read a poem.
I read it first aloud and then to myself and I read each one 3 or 4 days in a row. If I had more time, I would read them each for a week or a month but I am in my seventies now and, as the saying goes, so many poems, so little time.
I always marveled that little children want to read the same book over and over, but I get it now. Every time I read the same poem, I love it even more. And, since I know that I can read this poem as many times as I like, I am freed from the pressure of trying to ‘get it’ on the first pass and can enjoy it as, I believe, it is meant to be enjoyed; I can listen and visualize and empathize without thought or judgement. For however long I want.
Sometimes the poem immediately suits me, other times it rankles and I don’t like it and think to myself, ‘I’m only going to read this one twice. Fuck it.’ But it’s like taking in a rescue dog for ONE WEEK, guys, I am totally not getting another dog. Of course you fall in love with it and then it is your dog and your best friend and you don’t know why you didn’t know that at first whiff. Later, I go back to those and I am so grateful for the tiny nano-modicum of self-discipline left from the shallow pond I once drew from that made me give it another chance.
I once told a student of mine who began writing poetry that writing a poem was like raising a child. You can’t just take care of it one time; you have to shelter it, feed it, cut its hair and toenails and think about it many, many times for a long time. As a person whose best shot at writing a poem is something that begins ‘Roses are red,” I felt fully entitled to tell her that.
(One year later she got a full ride to Sarah Lawrence, dropped the poetry shit and became a recording executive but the point is, at one point she was that puppy and she raised those puppies and that dog is still in there somewhere.)
It turns out that I was right about that, not about writing a poem (how would I know?), but about rereading one. A poem, all art really, is a conversation across time and space, but it’s only a conversation if someone’s on the other end of the line. What a privilege to be that person every morning. I am well aware that most people do not have that kind of leisure, time and opportunity. They don’t have the scarf, they don’t have the yard and saddest of all, they don’t have that dog.