Poem: ObPoemReWriting

I do hate writing about writing; and yet here we are...

The man is upstairs, writing again. A
pointless habit. A thankless hobby. He
burns his poems and stories in the fire
pit in his back yard, the pit was built
one long weekend last May, in-
between unidentifiable allergens. He
writes, still, almost to spite dead
daydreams of picking up a book in a store
with his name printed tastefully
on the side, smelling glue and paper
and ink. It is the one joy, among joys
of family, work, and simple existence,
that is his.

He is in a state of no-mind, of
perfect focus. He holds the pen softly,
it all comes.

A small child appears at the doorway,
his son, and he can smell his rotten
diaper from across the space. He
rises to find a diaper, wipes, powder,
various items required for modern
infant fecal removal. He completes
the task, in wonder at how fast the son--
he can call him a child now, no longer
a helpless infant--has grown. How
much he loves, he doesn't think there
are words that exist that are quite
right. His son runs off to bother sister.
As every day.

The man looks at the paper, going
over what he has written. "It is more
or less crap," he says. He's probably
right. He holds the pen softly
and nothing comes.

The man looks out the window at Autumn
glorious and wet; leaves carpet the
lawn. Which needs to be raked, bagged,
recycled at the front of the driveway
because tomorrow they come to take
cans marked yard waste. The day
after is trash.

The paper sits; the secular meditation
is over. Not the kids' fault--but a
little--the man feels like a bad parent.
He's probably right. He holds the pen
softly, nothing comes.

A random phone call from his mother,
asking directions to a store she's been
to a dozen times. He worries about
brain lesions and forgotten children's
birthdays. He worries about genetics and
himself and others.

The soft rain stops, so he goes out
to rake the leaves. Sometime after
the first pile, but before the children
jump into the leaves, the focus comes
but the pen is far away. Even as he
walks toward the house, he knows
that the feeling be gone once he gets
there. And it is. He is not surprised.
He fetches a half-full notebook;
he will burn more than leaves in the
fire pit today.