And here we are again, with our old friend Monday morning.

I think yesterday's class went well. I focused on the work of three poets--Sylvia Plath, Ruth Stone, and Robert Hayden--and participants wrote and talked and pondered in response. Afterward Tom and I went for a small walk in the falling snow, and then I made lazy-day macaroni for dinner--just orecchiette and butter and cheese and a handful of spinach and a handful of garlic and a handful of cherry tomatoes and some chicken broth, alongside a bowl of sliced oranges. 15 minutes from start to finish.

Today I've got to go grocery-shopping first thing because of course I didn't do it yesterday and of course there's another sleet storm arriving in the afternoon. Then editing and ms reading, and then a phone call with Teresa about the Aeneid, and then some post-carpentry housework.

I've been spending so much time lately thinking about other people's books: how their poems accrue one by one into a larger entity, what that entity reveals, what it circles around but avoids . . . the dark whirlpool was a metaphor that rose to my lips during class yesterday.

Each of the participants has a whirlpool that haunts and terrifies them. We all do.

I wrote this poem because I was trying to describe how hard it is to say what needs to be said.

A Listener Sends Six Letters to God, in Autumn

 

Dawn Potter

Dear Sir, he wrote at dawn,

 

I am requesting your kind attention

to a perplexity, which is this:

that I believe I may be hearing

what otherwise cannot be heard,

and I am finding it necessary to become

a vessel for pouring this sound into the atmosphere,

if only I may have your assistance in the matter.

Dear Sir,

I pray you, accept this request

with all seriousness and haste.

Yours most truly,

 

and, with great care, he signed 

 

A Friend.

 

*

 

Dear Sir, he wrote at dawn,

 

Today I trudged down the muddy lanes

that snake alongside the sluggish canal

or suddenly veer away, to writhe

among the narrow houses and shops

elbowing one another against the dingy

waterfront.

 

He paused. On his pen, a bubble of ink trembled.

 

You see I am avoiding

what I need to say.

Despite undue haste, I remain

 

The bubble fell, and blotted.

 

Your Servant.

 

*

 

Dear Sir, he wrote at dawn,

 

For three days now I have been writing letters

to you. I trust you know that they are always

the same letters, though my words are different.

I am practicing my scales, and my hands are dirty,

and the piano keys stick in the humid air.

Nonetheless, I am

 

Here a fingerprint appeared.

 

*

 

Dear Sir, he wrote at dawn,

 

Last evening, I walked, again,

along the canal and I felt

the crackle of my letter to you

as it lay inside my hat, I felt

the snag of the letter’s fold against

my hair, which, I admit,

is neither clean nor combed.

It was necessary to mail the missive.

The question was:

where were you most likely to receive it?

I chose to drop the paper into a farrier’s mossy well,

and perhaps you now hold it

in your dry, your supple hand.

Reveal to me a sign.

My landlady is importunate.

Impatient,

I am your humble

 

Here a small hole appeared.

 

*

 

Dear Sir, he wrote at dawn,

 

In truth I am becoming weary of this chore.

I distrust myself.

Last night, while I was at the piano,

my landlady pounded the butt end of a rusty musket

against my chamber door.

To all appearances, she hates my sonata.

Perhaps you, with your finer ear,

will despise it also. I cannot pinpoint,

in these waning days, what, if anything,

I trust.

Yours, in difficulty,

 

and now the handwriting became a broad scrawl

 

One Who Attempts Clarity.

 

*

 

Dear Sir, he wrote at dawn,

 

Persistence is a reckless master.

This will not be my final missive, it will not.

Maintain your vigilance. Hunt for notes

tied to the highest twigs of trees.

I have torn the sonata into shreds

and floated them in the canal. They

are not the letter I meant to write.

I believe you understand.

A breeze blows across the piano strings

and the machine strums its private tunes.

They are not mine. Perhaps they are yours.

 

I do not hear my own in any gale.

[from Accidental Hymn (Deerbrook Editions, forthcoming)]