The woman who taught me to write poetry
lived for a brief butterfly moment
in my seaside town. She wrote words
I remembered in the night, her images
slipping behind consciousness, dazzling
and bright like wind on the water, spindrift
ruffling the waves before wafting away.
She strung those words on a loom, crafted
them entwined around each other,
weaving and reweaving until she
created perfection in every line, writing
of love and loss and the Midwest,
a place which never left her heart
and to which in the end she returned.
She fell in love with Joe Bones, a gnarly
boat captain who played guitar, went to Haiti
to help after the earthquake, drank until
paralytic with the guys at the Beachcombers’
Club. She took him to cockfights in Havana,
dared him to run naked with her down
the beach in winter, tossing clothes
like discarded confetti in their wake.
She’s long gone, now,
but I keep writing. I have no sea-captain,
no guitar, no cockfights—I live instead
in solitude, loving only this bay glittering
in moonlight, the heron gliding over
the moors, my cluttered desk where I
have conversations with my own thoughts:
why did you write that? the metaphor
doesn’t work. But mostly I say,
I didn’t know she was teaching me to fly.