This morning the air is held still by a thin fog. It is nose tingly cold. Breathing deeply brings the scents of mint and earth and a faint tinge of banana skin. And just in case I haven’t got the message from my nose, my lungs tell me it’s a wrap up warm day.
Alt text says this week’s photo is a pair of brown shoes on carpet. I say it is my walking shoes on the front door mat. I have been walking most days, but I seem to have been putting it off until later in the day since the clocks changed. This isn’t my best choice because one of the best parts about taking a good stroll is the fact it enlivens my brain and helps me shake my thoughts into shape. It is also good for my mental health to do it when the day is nearer its start than its end. So I am giving a grateful nod to my sturdy footwear and to knowing what parts of a daily routine are most effective as I work on bringing my walking time closer to first light than sundown.
This week I needed a poem for a thing, and I wasn’t sure whether I had already written something useful or not. This sent me searching through a variety of folders on my computer. As I was searching, I found a poem from 2023 called, THANKS FOR READING EMILY DICKINSON TO ME OVER THE INTERCOM AT PRICE CHOPPER. It’s one of those poems that wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t been scrolling social media at a particular time on a particular day, and I decided it would enjoy another outing of its own in this blog. It was a post from Rishi Dastidar that inspired the poem, and I rather like the fact that I can clearly remember writing it even if I had sort of forgotten it existed.
And this makes me think of the joy I get from setting down words. Often that joy is from setting down my own words, but I am also lucky enough to spend time at a Retirement Village setting down words with members of a poetry group there. A session there last week started with me reading back to them the group poem we had created for National Poetry Day on my previous visit. And the part that made my heart sing this time was that there was something palpable about the way the poem landed in the air around us as we listened to it again.
I love the solitary nature of poetry where I am reading silently to myself or being a member of a zoom room audience, but I also love poetry in different places. It was my passion for poetry being out in the wild that spurred me on to find a place to be for National Poetry Day each year when I was no longer working in education. That’s how I found a seat in a comfortable chair at The Retirement Village. Prior to that, in 2023, I walked up and down my local high street asking people if they would like to hear a poem about conkers or a poem called Darling. (It was a 50:50 split.)
I still take poems to the local town on National Poetry Day. And recently it delighted me to discover that one of the people I gave a poem to now has it taped to the wall next to their work area. “Now I can read my poem whenever I want to,” she told me when she showed me where it was.
At a recent meeting with members of The Association of Business Poets we were talking about recording poems in workplaces. There have been some lovely videos already ( https://www.instagram.com/poetry_in_business/ ) and it feels like a lovely way of bringing more poetry out into the world. Kath is heading off to a yarn show very soon, and I am rather hoping that having given her the idea she might record a poem when she is there… all that colourful yarn in a wonderfully creative space would make a great backdrop.
THANKS FOR READING EMILY DICKINSON TO ME OVER THE INTERCOM AT PRICE CHOPPER
It was exactly what I needed
while I was standing on tiptoe coaxing
the vegan burgers on the top shelf
forward with my fingertips.
They are all I will eat now
because they remind me of her.
My freezer drawers are full
of sesame seeded rolls
and my fridge is stacked
with jars of gherkin slices.
I offer myself ketchup
and yellow mustard,
imagine my burger screen printed
over and over again
on all the walls of my house.
