They say never-- the teachers of writing
say, never to write about writing itself.
But sometimes, there's nothing else to write about.
[LAUGHTER]
This poem is called "Velocity."
"In the club car that morning, I had my notebook
open on my lap and my pen uncapped,
looking every inch the writer, right down
to the little writer's frown on my face.
But there was nothing to write about except life
and death and the low warning sound of the train whistle.
I did not want to write about the scenery that
was flashing past, cows spread over a pasture,
hay rolled up meticulously-- things
you see once and will never see again.
But I kept my pen moving by drawing over and over again
the face of a motorcyclist in profile
for no reason I can think of, a biker with sunglasses
and a weak chin, leaning forward helmet-less,
his long thin hair trailing behind him in the wind.
I also drew many lines to indicate speed,
to show the air becoming visible as it broke over the biker's
face, the way it was breaking over
the face of the locomotive that was pulling me toward Omaha
and whatever lay beyond Omaha--
for me and all the other stops to make before the time
would arrive to stop for good.
We must always look at things from the point
of view of eternity, the college theologians used to insist.
From which I imagine we would all
appear to have speed lines trailing behind us as we rushed
along the road of the world, as we rush down
the long tunnel of time.
The biker of course, drunk on the wind.
But also the man reading by the fire, speed lines
coming off his shoulders in his book.
And the woman standing on a beach studying
the curve of the horizon.
Even the child asleep on a summer night, speed lines
flying from the posters of her bed,
from the white tips of the pillowcases,
and from the edges of her perfectly motionless body."