A Poem a day - 2nd installment

Back when my friend Tina was 'infecting' people with the bug for writing a poem a day she wrote this one which I love:

Where to start

I wouldn't know where to start

says Carol, when I ask

if she'll write poems

after she quits work. You start

with the taste of the tea,

the look of the kitchen, the view

out the window, the dream.

Start right here, with the sound

of a quiet house, faint rainbeat

on the roof, flicker of candle deep

down in a blue cup, the feel

of a wet shirt from feeding baby geese

and pulling out soggy pooped-on hay

while rain splashes down and the geese

cheep in confusion at the disappearance

of their ground and the intimidating pile

of new dry hay, like the sudden arrival

of a forest. Start with the thought

of listening to the day, of chronicling

the invisible currents as the days pass,

since the  currents are not apparent up close

but the maps must be drawn up close

before we can stand back

to see the way the river runs,

before we see how it was

to travel into this new place,

this motherhood, this remembering,

before we can peel

the layers of the story back

and look at how the river has carried us

when we didn't know how we could carry

one more thing.

                             copyright Tina Tau,  2000