My friend and fellow Teaching Labster, Sheila Dunn, sent me this, which she called "a bad poem." I don't think it's bad; I think it's really good. I wonder if this came out of our very brief discussion about Aporia, that Greek notion that where our thinking gets jammed up, that's where we have to keep going in order to have the big breakthrough?
KEEPING A LOG
(for Bethany Reid)
My day is a log jam once more.
I stare past it, dumb and dulled,
a thud and a jolt now and then
but most of the time choked in place.
That's where you come in.
Why not, you say,
Raise a log, hoist it on its end,
then shave the rough parts
and rub your hands on its grain?
Why not, you say,
pull the post with the strength you doubt,
then haul it to a dry spot
to see it the first time?
And why not imagine a face in the wood
and you with a knife and the will to chip?
And why not, you say,
lay it on the ground and sit a spell?
You stir the log.
You break the jam.
Bring it forth, you say,
watch the whirl,
feel the water in wait,
and it will move you.
KEEPING A LOG
(for Bethany Reid)
My day is a log jam once more.
I stare past it, dumb and dulled,
a thud and a jolt now and then
but most of the time choked in place.
That's where you come in.
Why not, you say,
Raise a log, hoist it on its end,
then shave the rough parts
and rub your hands on its grain?
Why not, you say,
pull the post with the strength you doubt,
then haul it to a dry spot
to see it the first time?
And why not imagine a face in the wood
and you with a knife and the will to chip?
And why not, you say,
lay it on the ground and sit a spell?
You stir the log.
You break the jam.
Bring it forth, you say,
watch the whirl,
feel the water in wait,
and it will move you.
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