around and around
There’s a woman who came to my homeless writing workshop last week who talked me five minutes’ late for class. She talked about how she wrote this poem some time ago and since then she hasn’t been able to write it better. It always comes out choppy. She has tried so many times, and each time it doesn’t “flow” — she kept using that word. Around and Around the Leaves / chase in the wind is how it begins. She spent the twenty-minute writing time transcribing the “choppy” version that was still in her mind. When she went to share, she explained that she’s been writing this poem since second grade. Second grade. She got it right the first time, but not again since. What an effort, somehow honorable, to keep trying to perfect the same 14 lines for forty years.
