Vol 1 No 2 2007
For my fellow poets
who
knew me first
through the words i chose and didn’t laugh
when I changed my mind. We are
the harvesters of weeds, hardiest
and most forgiving of flowers; you know
most of us won’t make it, and if we’re lucky
will spend a lifetime bent by the edges
of pavement and dirt roads, picking beauties
too common for a world obsessed
with rarity. If we’re lucky we’ll retain
this lack of clarity of which we all
complain. Meanwhile we sit, haloed by the ordinary
fluorescent light, our faces so far
unmarked by anything we’ve felt, as yet
another morning passes in lines
we struggled at night to find and I
love you all, for no particular reason
other than we’re here; love you for
the joy I feel in asking: do we
have revisions due tomorrow? Just being able
to ask. Trudging to class: a senseless elation,
bliss that I am only my own creation. You,
my fellow poets, my schoolmates, have been
scattered into the path I happen to be walking
as I am young; today I asked: we
don’t have to grow up yet, do we? What
is our responsibility? The world
has notions: do you feel ready?
Not me. I don’t want to stop getting
high in my car and screaming along
to Modest Mouse songs, fatalistic symphonies
evoking all my stubborn love for our flawed species,
the music’s exuberant misery a reminder
that my existential angst is a luxury
for which I am grateful, that my body
with all its imperfections isn’t going
to get any better, that our youth, in all
its indulgent stupidity, is a valid state of being.
Why should we rush to join the pristine garden
when we have a world full of disorder
ripe for exploration?
Samantha Bernstein