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Grabbing Inspiration from the Everyday
Writing poems in idle time
I have a great temporary gig in which I monitor students as they take online tests. I selfishly have been able to mine this time for my own purposes. Being confined to this time and this place has been like a nest in which ideas come to roost, and I birth them into poems.
It feels like raised consciousness. It feels like I am living a poetic life, seeing layers of meaning in the everyday. It has to do with being forced into this empty space — needing to keep my attention on the students, but also needing to be stimulated. Some of the time, I am waiting for the next group of students. I keep a little sketchbook with me, and lately, I’ve been grabbing, jotting down, and capturing, these little poems, mostly haiku, to sort out the random thoughts that come to tease my attention. I took the bait, and wrote these poems — written in the first two hours of my workday.
Poem 1 — It started with the drive to work in the morning:
Stuck in traffic
I notice
The palm trees shivering in the breeze
The clouds, pastel-tinged, hovering
Over the ocean
Dripping its soft shade
