starting from scratch
asphalt sparkles like when we would run
around the streets at night in the summer
warm lights in windows, it’s like the whole neighborhood took an exhale and marked the shift in season, not summer anymore but not fall yet, late summer, it’s own sacred time.
starting from scratch was going to be the title of the first post here, as a revamped version of the project, the fig blossom, that i started in april 2020, as a way to get myself writing more with less attachment. i had abandoned it maybe six months after. somehow it had become another carefully orchestrated, gracefully choreographed thing that would not get finished. (and then i think, can we ever really finish something, something like this?)
and can we ever, actually, start from scratch, organically?
i’ve been a student for a long time. and now, a teacher. this is the new year for those that observe the academic calendar, for those of us whose planners start in august because that makes much more sense than january.
but i’ve been thinking a lot about revisiting some poems i wrote five years ago that may have accurately predicted this thaw, the future, yes, and we can never really start from scratch because all of this is built into us already.
anyway, i write my poems and thoughts in the notes app on my phone as i go for walks on the sparkling asphalt at night. i don’t remember that they are there until i accidentally revisit them when i have the next idea, messy surprises to uncover.
on post number three, not starting from scratch, already breaking the format because it just needs to be easy, or maybe the format was broken from the start, and this is the most honest thing i’ve been able to make yet.
image: daisies dug up digitally, that were left here from April 2020, probably during a pandemic walk in Iowa City.