Field Notes From a Writing Life: Living With a Poem

Reflections on trusting the slow, unseen work of a poem

"The point is, to live everything."
—Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Every so often, a poem arrives that behaves differently.

Most poems begin quietly enough. A line appears while walking the dog. An image lingers after a drive home. A phrase insists on being written down before it slips away. We welcome it, follow it for a while, and eventually discover where it wants to go.

But every now and then, another kind of poem enters the room.

It doesn’t simply ask to be written.

It asks to be carried.

You find yourself thinking about it while making coffee, driving to the gym, deadheading zinnias. It becomes the first thing you reach for each morning and the last thing you consider before turning out the light. You aren’t trying to solve it. At least, that’s not what you tell yourself. Yet quietly, almost without noticing, you’re asking it to reveal itself before it’s ready.