Determination

Cabbage—the first word put down

with his new pen, a trophy pen,

like a trophy wife, not cheap,

absurd to use a ballpoint pen

for a task like this, a challenge,

for which he’d also bought a new,

but antique, rolltop desk recently

restored, with matching chair,

also not cheap, and for which

he’d renovated the attic room with

pine-paneled walls, bookshelves,

and a good light for his new office

or weekend office, a place planned

for many years, even before college,

back in high school in fact, a resolve

rare in his life, but about which

he’d dreamed in free moments

at work, and which kept him

sane during those tedious years

of doing the taxes for strangers,

but now at last begun, excitingly

begun, as he leaned forward with

pen raised to put down on paper

the first word of his first novel.

Copyright Credit: Stephen Dobyns, "Determination" from The Day’s Last Light Reddens the Leaves of the Copper Beech. Copyright © 2016 by Stephen Dobyns. Reprinted by permission of BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org.

Source: The Day’s Last Light Reddens the Leaves of the Copper Beech (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2016)