The following poem was buried in old archives and I thought I ought to resurrect it as a reminder to live deliberately and appreciate every small moment in life.
Reading student poetry in Cedar Key while looking out at the Gulf of Mexico
April 3, 2006
A poem ought to be written today, I thought, as if it were some revelation.
After all, April is National Poetry Month. I had been reading a stack of student
poetry, hoping on vacation to catch up with work.
I should have remembered it was poetry month earlier—
upon seeing the mammoth rosemary plant outside the gift shop on Dock Street,
like nothing I could ever grow in Wisconsin where winter still puts us in our place.
I had drawn my hands through it twice and brought the fragrance to my face,
inhaling its crispy woodsy-ness. Then remembered: April 23! Shakespeare’s birthday.
“Rosemary for remembrance”—of course. How easily we forget. Or is it just me?
Out here on the deck of our condo, the Gulf glittering in the mid-morning sun, I had been
writing a letter to my student who admitted in the margin of her sonnet that poems
were not as easy for her to write as short stories or essays.
Then that old sheepish nag came to me, that I may have, at some point
in my early teaching life, been that Billy Collins teacher who asked students to
“tie up a poem and beat a confession out of it”
But I hope not. I hope not.
A poem should be written today because the day in this paradise
should be thought of deliberately, should be remembered,
should be held up to the face and breathed in deeply.