when I was a young child
when I was a young child,
unconsciously I felt pressure
that at some point as an adult
I would have to make sense of
the grain patterns in plywood.
I remember this now, suddenly,
at 47, the age my mother was
when she first got cancer —
which she seemingly defeated
then and for seven years after,
before it returned all over
and killed her in three months —
as I sit in the waiting room
of a medical clinic in seattle
looking around until jeni returns
from a routine check-up
and noticing the narrow whorl
on the edge of a long, polished
piece of plywood placed
like an ornamental awning
above the reception counter.
earlier in the day, I had walked
from jeni’s to downtown olympia
to deposit a check at wsecu
and get a latté, but also to
meander around absorbing
the beauty of the world
and hopefully pausing
to get a good poem started.
frustratingly, though, I didn’t
jot down a single phrase,
despite admiring the colors
of the deciduous trees on eighth
and elsewhere along my walk.
partially, this was because I was
distracted by how cold it was,
suddenly, after our long summer,
so much so that I hustled along,
hands in jeans pockets
like an early dylan album cover,
but worrying that my toes,
rubbing against thin socks
in rigid vinyl boots, might get
bad chilblains as in winters past.
mostly, though, it was because
to my disappointment,
I could only think of clichés
to describe the marvelous sights
I saw swirling all around me,
or else phrasings so unique
they circled all the way back
to being clunky and distracting,
like that the gauntlet of leaves
strewn on the street and still
shivering on branches above me
looked like the mess of paper bits
I cover my coffee table with
before I begin arranging them
together into a new collage.
everything gets written right
eventually, though, so walk on
past the point where it could’ve
been jotted down — past the age
your mother first felt mortal,
past the age you first felt
eternal enigmas tease insight —
and on back to the point
where all small patterns say:
it’s big of you to love today.