April 28th poem

Reading and Writing

Finish unloading groceries and eating a snack of hummus and pita chips.  Sit down to write poem with a movie playing in the background in which Patrick Swayze plays a hillbilly cop.  Begin trying to read a poem by Ruth Stone.  Tell C that I wish I still had my own room to go into to read.  He begins talking about gluten, how he thought it was a sugar problem some people have with it, but it's actually a protein problem.  Say, "OK.  I'm going to read and write now."  Begin trying to concentrate on reading a poem, but look up to see a scene in the movie that has several actors I recognize, but younger, and begin naming some of them.  C gets up to open a bottle of wine.  Sit at desk with back to the TV to look through notebook.  Hear a bunch of screeching tire noises from the TV.  Tell C that I will take some wine, too.  He doesn't pour another glass, but leaves the bottle on the counter.  Get up and pour 1/2 glass of wine.  Sit down at desk again.  Pick up a different book.  James Schuyler is saying, "Suppose you had your life to live over/ knowing what you know?/ Suppose you had plenty money"  Helen Hunt is playing the violin on TV.  She is on a porch in Kentucky in a flowered dress and says she is the violin teacher.  Wish that you were on a porch in Kentucky.  She has the same generic southern accent that non-southern actors always have in movies.  You consider looking up where she is from to further justify your annoyance.  Begin writing a poem in which "the baby toddles toward a boy with a basketball/ lifting both arms and waving as he toddles/ as if greeting a long-lost Army buddy."  Wonder if the Army buddy would really be "long-lost," and if these buddies would really greet each other that way.  Think about the confusion of the boy with the basketball.  It was unclear whether the baby was greeting him specifically, or just showing excitement.  Either way, the boy was unsure how to react.  Drink wine.  Read a couple Schuyler poems about summer plants and wish for summer, even if the "sun smites."  It is late April, but it feels like another Schuyler March-- "lacks charm."  Realize you are simply going through the book looking for phrases to write down, and that you would rather do this than write your own poem tonight, but that really you would rather go to bed.