When Your Father is a Fireman, You Can't Avoid the Ashes: Poetry Gong #7

Once there was a fire and I walked
into it, head first, feet following

my eyes, skimming the white
hot coals, looking for a way

in. Once, despite her burning
weight my father carried

a screaming girl into a hot building.
Those inside hushed, removed their eyes

out of respect for the embalmed.
Only one man asked if the chicken
barbecue was any good that afternoon.

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Whew! Under the wire! And here is what is so good about poetry gong: if I didn't have an invisible deadline, I would have never written this poem. Now, I'm not saying it's a great poem. But it is a poem. And this string of words would have never had the pleasure (!) of being introduced if I didn't have a little pressure.

Oh sure, I wrote two other poems today. One in the morning in the course of my write-five-minutes-before-I-get-out-of-bed-writing, and one while the kids and hubby played after lunch (I can barely bring myself to admit we were at McDonalds...) In fact, I considered going straight to bed tonight without posting.

Yes, dear reader, I was going to blow the whole thing off. Write a witty piece tomorrow about how I wrote two poems so, technically, I haven't failed, don't have to go back to the beginning of the gong. Make a bunch of excuses about being out all day, falling asleep with my son after reading to him... But, I didn't. I picked a poem out of Mark Strand's Man and Camel, I read for inspiration, and I wrote a poem. And I'm glad.