Anniversary

August 23, 2007

This day always seems sacred to me as, alone, secretive, and bitterly in love, I sat at my hand-me-down desk under the light of the lamp my father had when he was a boy, and wrote my first poem. The night was blue because of the orange light of the room. There were voices in the street. I had never done anything like that before, never by my own might slammed a door open into a greater world. I didn’t know if sadness or exultation was uppermost in my heart. So it has been ever since. What would I have been if I were not a poet? It is almost impossible to imagine. I was a poet before I wrote that poem. I was a poet before I knew there was a word for what I was. People say there are emotions which exceed or exist without words. I concede that, but think they are like water which is not gathered into a cup or a river or a sea.