Scheherazade

Why do I write poetry? This was always the question that bugged me in college. Why should I bother writing about why I write, or why, for that matter, bother even thinking about why. I should just write! I can't really answer why I write, or why I love poetry. I just do.

I love words. Thimble, twinkle, clair de lune. Lute, Linus, silent, clanging. I love how words can paint a picture. Love how words that don't go together can be put next together and all of a sudden, someone says, Yes!

I like to think that since the wife-ly, kitchen goddess gene skipped a generation, I was blessed with the sugary thumb of a word chef. I can cook up a mean sestina. I'm known for my spicy sonnets in the coffee clatch circle. People beg for my famous free verse at cocktail parties. Someone stop me! I'm a poet without an apron.

Please, forgive me. It's late. I do have a poetic answer to the poetry question brewing (another good word) in the coffee pot of my mind, but until it's ready, here is a poem I posted way back in July when I was a lonely little blogger (and with the previous puns, is it any wonder?). Thanks for reading!


Scheherazade, Pen in Hand

I am following the thread of a poem
finding my way
between the folds of life’s cloth.
Sometimes sliding easily in
and out of silk,
capturing happy mothering moments,
precious three-year-old chatter
of handy dandy parking spots,
when we park up close,
cats as best friends,
the golden glow of slumber.

Other times I am jabbing a dull needle
through deep dark denim,
bending my pen around
hidden words,
angry statues,
frozen strands of stilted conversations,
the wide wale corduroy of being man and wife.

Always I am following that thread,
unspooling in long winding lines,
wrapping round corners,
threading
unthreading
knotting
unknotting.
Some days sewing cowboys
in my favorite color scheme
with golden hair and midnight hats.
Some days stitching
dark-haired, Indian-eyed baristas
into the back pocket of my sewing kit
as they stroke their goatees,
ask large or small, whole or skim.

I collect words in thimbles,
use pinking shears on newspapers, pump
my trundle in rhyme, sew closed
the holes in my socks
with letters
cut from magazines.
I will not stop until I am Scheherazade.