"All our rainy days saved up for this."*

When I am not writing poetry -
when I am punishing myself, or cozying up with fear or self-doubt -
I arrange my life so as not to be alone with my thoughts. My silence-filler of choice is books. I am embarassingly promiscuous in my efforts. I will go to the public library and fill up with anything and everything I can get my hands on - the schlockier, the better (the point is not edification, but distraction). Mysteries, thrillers, romance, even Westerns, for God's sake.

This winter, it stopped working. I couldn't move my eyes across the page - couldn't take in another sentence. Okay, fine; I upped the ante. I started reading literature in foreign languages. The extra effort required seemed to work for awhile. I read Sabato's El Tunel in Spanish, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in Urdu (don't laugh - it's hard to find literature in Urdu that is conversational enough for me to forego a dictionary). I even tried to resuscitate my college German, memorizing pages of vocabulary and reacquainting myself with maddeningly complex declensions of nouns and pronouns. Enough. I am done with it.

In the past, I have been able to find my way back to my own silence by tricking my mind into thinking I am busy. Swinging on a hammock often works; "Hey, I'm moving! Clearly I'm being productive, no need to panic." Long walks sometimes work. A non-stressful, longish commute works really well. None of these things require sustained, higher-order reasoning, but they require just enough physical engagement to pass for "doing something". No commute this year, no hammock, it's hideous outside. I need a new strategy.

*Elaine Equi, "Can't Complain."

"as though here it were a daisy...

of which darker love is demanded"*

I am ready to think about poetry again.
Paul Celan can help one do that - consider poetry even in the bleak, unlovely margins of a life.

*"The Secret of the Ferns," Paul Celan.