Yesterday I came across an old "ideas" file on the computer, a place I'd intended to jot and stash images and material for stories, poems and the like. I'd forgotten the file and hadn't opened it in ages, since I usually turn to notebooks and scrap paper. There were only a half-dozen items on my list, which is actually titled "idears," because that seems a little amusing and vaguely British and has "dear" in it, always nice. One of my idears was this gem:
POEM ABOUT DUST
I have no recollection of writing this note-to-self, and not even sure what I had in mind with my poem about dust. The constant battle against? The squeamy feeling that comes with thinking about dust mites on the skin? To dust we shall return?
I really ought to write a poem about dust. Dorianne Laux did, and so did Li-Young Lee.
(Fun for hours at The Writer's Almanac, at least for a word nerd like me. Here you will find the work of David Shumate, a fine, fine, poet I am lucky to call a colleague. Related: Good Poems for Hard Times, selected by Garrison Keillor.)
I have more notebooks than I can keep track of, filled with the unfinished, the half-thought-out. Maybe I need to dust off a few old ones to see what else I've forgotten.
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