Thinking About Writing

I've been thinking that I'm going to have to produce a full portfolio sometime in the future, some kind of group of poems that can lead to a chap book, and perhaps publication. Here are some things that I've been finding are unintentionally poetic:

"Enlightening experiences with new/old friends. Loveliness sets in."

This is a facebook status by a friend that I've never met in real life. I've been considering the unintentional poetic, how things connect us in ways we couldn't have seen before, or in ways that people may not notice. The way two people who've never met clearly have similar tastes colors, whole groups of people move in packs of colors that they never even see. The ignored slant of a tree, the brush of common ideals and overlapping theory, a lunch between a rhetorician, a poet, and an engineer. Where else do these things happen? I've decided they are all, "Enlightening experiences with new/old friends. Loveliness sets in."


The other day I was in the post office and the girl next to me was getting upset. She was the kind of person that I might have judged immediately had I been even two years younger. She was a bit over weight, wearing ill-fitting, goth style clothes with plastic, polka-dotted bows in her black pigtails. Her glasses slid down the make-up on her nose as she frantically counted the change in her wallet. She needed seven dollars cash to post something over-night. It had to be shipped that day and by the time she could return to the post office, after she came back from work, which she was rapidly becoming late to, the office would be closed. She only had four dollars on her. When I gave her the three dollars she had no idea how to respond. At best I would have spent it on snacks, or vending machine coffee. I could see that she wanted to refuse the money and accept it at the same time. It produced an amusing reaction from her. She simply slid the bills over to her side of the counter, gave me a slide-long glance, as if at any moment I'd snatch the money back from her, and said, "I think this makes seven." The lady behind the counter looked at me, as if she too thought at any moment I might snatch the money back. I nodded, indicating that I was quite positive I didn't need three dollars. When they finished their transaction the girl turned completely around without giving me a second look and marched out of the post office looking as if she were the busiest person alive. The post lady looked at me and very dryly said, "Well, that was unexpected." I wasn't sure if I agreed with her or not.

I had clearly put the other girl on the spot and I'm not sure she was used to receiving random acts of kindness. I knew exactly how she might be feeling at the moment. She was too proud to admit she needed the help. She certainly didn't want it, but knew somewhere within her that it was her only option, one she couldn't have reached without the assistance of someone who could very well be looking down on her.

I'm not sure exactly what I find lovely about this experience, except to say that everyone knows the feelings of pride, and those moments when it's force is tested. It was certainly, at the very least, enlightening.


I hope to convince myself and others that we are all poetically bound. There is something so wonderful about the thought for me that I'm almost already convinced that it must be true. Another facebook status, for example, has this within it, "they have rained through this kingdom." That's definitely a typo in context, but let's look at it for what it says. I love the image it produces for me, traveling with rain through the kingdom. It may not be the best stuff but there's something wonderful living just underneath of that idea, of that thought. This is the way I think the whole world must be, even at its worst.