A poem about writing, like a kind of negative capability
that you can write out of fullness and you
can write out of emptiness.
And this is more out of emptiness, which
leads to a kind of fullness.
"Writing at Night"
"This empty feeling that makes me fearful
I'll disappear the minute I stop thinking
may only mean that, beyond the kitchen window in the dark,
the minions of the past are gathering, waiting
for the dishes to be cleared away,
so they can hustle supper into oblivion.
This feeling may only mean that supper is done
and night has the house surrounded,
and the past is declaring itself the victor.
It doesn't deny that tomorrow I'll
wake to find that the usual bales of light
have been unloaded and distributed equally
in every precinct, that the tree at the corner is awash in it,
and in the flaming yellow coats of the crossing guards.
This empty feeling could be a gift I haven't yet
grown used to, a lightness that means I've shaken off
the weight of resentment, envy, remorse, and pride that
drags a soul down.
A thinness that lets me slip through a needle's eye
into the here and now of the kitchen
without losing a button.
An emptiness that betokens a town for self-forgetting, that
lets me welcome the stories of others, which, even now, may be
on their way, hoping I'll take them in,
however rumpled they look, and gray-faced,
as they drag themselves from the car with their bulky night bags
and water jokes.
It's late.
Have I gone to bed, they wonder.
And then they see the light in the kitchen,
and the figure who could be me, at the table, still up,
writing."