Here's a more personal poem.
My father died about a year ago.
And so I was telling people in some of the classes
that I was in, I avoided writing about it.
I didn't think that I wanted to.
I didn't think I knew enough about how I felt.
But I couldn't.
I couldn't write anything, which seemed close enough
to a message for me.
So I started in.
And the first ones that I did, I had to say, I mean,
they weren't sorted out in any way.
I wasn't really able to do anything.
But about half a year later, I thought
that I was able to get further.
And it took a while to get the poem finally
to be what it wanted to be.
But this is one of a sequence in the poem set about my father.
This one's called "News."
"Two weeks into April, the buds on the currants swell snow.
The ants crawl indoors.
I remember you're writing to me in secret once.
I miss the seasons.
Your South was a fetter of uprooted friendships.
The square of spotty grass, maples.
The vacant lot where you walk some dog for 30 years.
They ached in you.
You told me nothing last or I imagine
it was you who could pretend only a date had to be fixed.
And I'd be on your terrace, drink in hand,
making small talk or eating breakfast and visits
after that.
The wind is up.
In every room, doors rattle.
The wild rose thrashes a window sill.
Distance is sealed in an envelope.
In spring, a cloudless night, I walk outside,
lashed by my own hair in tow, and listening
to the river roar, muddied, swollen, burdened by runoff.
A widow calls each Sunday to tell me she's doing fine.
Habits last and lost.
Treeless vistas level as grief, and these letters I send that
cannot arrive."