Like all good poets, I have a notebook, in which the greater
portion of used pages contain the unfinished. One-liners that hang from the top
of otherwise vacant pages are in the majority, followed by varying lengths of fragmentary
poems at different stages of development. Some of these are hopeless causes
that no longer receive consideration. But there are a few that have become
noteworthy thorns in my side. These will not rest or give me rest until they
are complete.
One of these restless poems is of a man I saw only once. I
saw him while parked at a Loves gas station in a smaller than usual rural
Oklahoma town, and immediately he became a poem in the making. He was one of my
firsts, the first subject outside my familiar realm of existence, my first
attempt at characterizing someone I knew nothing about. He puzzled me, and I
knew instantly that he would continue to do so until I had done him justice.
But what type of poem was he to be? And what do I say about a man I don’t know?
For days and weeks following my sighting I carried this man around in my memory
until fear of him fading without me permanently sketching his portrait forced
my hand. So strong was the need to pin him down and figure him out that he
consumed my days and commandeered my nights. But the question remained: What do
I say about a man I do not know? I started with what I saw:
He rested his bike and his back
against
the wall, a pattern of
bricks,
beneath
a
sprawling sign that read:
Love’s
Country Store.
Thus, I began what would prove to be one of the most testing
pieces I have ever written. I knew what I saw and could easily describe the
physical, the tangible. But I sensed more than I saw that evening. I sensed
something that was not concrete, something I couldn’t easily pin to the page of
a notebook. This detective-like gut feeling was as real as what I saw, only
less visible. How do I convey what I saw and sensed? Both seemed equally
important to the process of bringing this man to life on paper. I fiddled with
the idea of fictionalizing him. Writers do it all the time, right? I mean, who
would know? I would know, I conceded. It would be an injustice. I couldn’t. Like
the Psalmist, I lamented, it is too high,
I cannot attain to it.
So, I settled with what I wanted to know about him:
I
watched him with a longing to know
his
thoughts, wanting to hear the
winding
turns of his narrative…
He, my mystery muse, still haunts my thoughts. His unfinished poem awaits
closure. And like all good poets who know that some poems cannot be rushed or
forced into compliance, I hold his memory and wait for time to loosen the
scales, hopeful that as they fall the hidden will be revealed and the man in my
memory will be justly rendered.
... I searched
his
face for a sign, a furrowing of the brows,
a
subtle twitch of facial muscle,
evidence
of life inside his dejected body.
But
he was transfixed in his thoughts,
suspended
in a state of delicate quandary,
a
space more satisfying than the view
of
trashcans and stained pavement.
Corrine is currently a first year MFA student at Florida
Atlantic University. She is an international student from Jamaica who suffers
from persistent homesickness.
