Behind the Words: June

Part journal, part trivia, part self-initiated interview revealing (almost) all my secrets.

Welcome to the monthly share - where I give you a peek behind the last page, for whatever that's worth.

If you don’t want spoilers, you can click on the titles to jump to the writing, then come back and get all the behind-the-scenes goodness.

Poetry:

Fledging

This really happened. It also didn't. It's true we didn't find all of the baby birds - and it's true that a frost crept in that night. But I'm on the fence about whether it took the lives of any of those birds. I think they were well and truly fledging, and that they were probably okay. Still, this poem crept in like the frost as I was out in the yard the next morning, and I remembered the Robin that was stuck in our barn not that long ago.

And of course, like I mentioned in the subtitle, at the end of the day this isn’t really about the birds at all.

Anemoia: In the Hour of Long Shadows

"In the hour of long shadows" (and just that one line) sat in my drafts/notes for over a year. I think it came to mind during a road trip, and for some reason that line is forever tied to an image that's stuck in my head - a brief glimpse of a blank wall lit up by a security light, framed by vines. Some abandoned building on the side of some highway, that I only saw for a split second, but I wanted to pull over all the same and get under that light, press my ear to the wall, and maybe hear what the shadows inside were saying. It's funny to me because that image was decidedly not "in the hour of long shadows" - a time that's very specifically near dusk in my mind.

I'm rambling. The real story behind this poem is that as a young'un I developed this habit of imagining myself in other people's homes - not in a creepy way though. Whenever I was in the car, and especially at night (something about the lights shining from the windows that makes this easier to fall into), I'd look out the passenger window and try to feel the story in each house we passed. I still do this.

Everything Possible

"I could tell you a story" is how this poem started, and then it grabbed up the concepts I have laying around for an oracle deck that has been long in the making, and it ran headlong into the woods with them. Sometimes a poem writes itself and tells you what it requires of you as an afterthought. I feel like that's what happened here. The "two" in this piece…well, I could tell you who they are, but that's one secret that I think is better enjoyed by not being known. Whoever you feel they are - that's who they are.

Here Again

To be completely honest, I've debated not sharing the words behind this poem. On one hand, it feels embarrassing, because it's personal in a way that other stories behind my poems aren't.  What I've lived through and experienced (i.e. Reiz Sen Senos Laikos) may not have been witnessed by other people, but it still took place in this world. The trees saw me. Time saw me. So those moments from my childhood and adolescence don't feel like secrets.

But here, the "events" that are the fertile soil for this poem aren't real. They haven't been witnessed by the world at large - just me, sitting here at my computer. They're fictitious - revolving around people that belong to a story that I've only just begun to write.

So it seems silly. I worry that telling you about this origin will cheapen the poem in some way. But, at the same time, the origin of those characters is rooted in reality. I know the facets of them that are reflections of people I know and love. So does that negate the "stain" of fiction?

I can practically hear some of you jumping to the logical conclusion, the one that I'm slowly reaching for as a result of these scribblings - all fiction is rooted in fact. Fiction is no less true, or valuable, or important than fact.

And I think I agree.

This poem is just reflecting a different kind of truth than the ones I'm used to.