Why Poetry: A Partial Autobiography ["It's about to rain, suddenly..."]

By Craig Morgan Teicher
It’s about to rain, suddenly
and without mercy.
                                   The rain will be brief, I can tell.
 
but I will be driven inside within earshot
 
of those anxious sounds bent
on occluding my mind
                                        like a pile of unpaid bills
 
—perhaps I will even see the pile of bills.
The rain will be brief, but no matter—I won’t
 
get back outside tonight.
 
~
 
So, I have maybe ten minutes
 
for this to get said
before all is wet and after the fact
 
~
 
because I have only a succession
of chances,
                         most missed.
 
~
 
Cal is finally fast asleep; the machine
that makes the mist that keeps
his trach moist rattles like an idling truck.
 
Simone is plotting something, standing and yelling
in her crib, jumping now,
                                                  her sleep a bad joke.
 
Ten years since last I was alone.
My mind is not my own.
 
~
 
Reading the new poems tonight of my old teacher
—she was never taken with me, not
particularly—I admire her lifelong pursuit
 
of childhood
through art.
 
She has pursued art as though
it is as serious as childhood,
which we all pursue to the end.
 
~
 
And yet, if her poems—ornate as stained glass
leaning against a wall in the glass shop, windows
looking in on almost
                                        nothing—say anything,
 
it is, I am alone; beauty is everything
except company, so beauty is nothing, almost.
 
~
 
Does she want what I have? Do I? My poems
lie.
 
The rain is coming. A few drops more and I’ll lose
these letters. Simone still won’t sleep.
 

Copyright Credit: Craig Morgan Teicher, "Why Poetry: A Partial Autobiography" from The Trembling Answers.  Copyright © 2017 by Craig Morgan Teicher.  Reprinted by permission of BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org.
Source: The Trembling Answers (BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org, 2017)