Unsayable

Poem + Prompt

Unsayable

The wild pinks 
are wilder this year, 
their tiny petals, a profusion, 
though yarrow and oxeye daisy 
are ever the same. 

I used to walk these fields
and nod to the flowers
without knowing their names. 
In that absence of words, 
I was less attuned
to timing or density or
upward, downward trends.
 
Still, I wonder what 
uncountable thing might have
broken off at the stem, wilted 
the moment I learned 
to clench a life 
between my teeth and tongue. 

The Prompt

I am fascinated by the way language awakes my attention, draws me in close, then hands me the world. I’m equally fascinated by the way language does the opposite—or rather the way language can be used as a buffer/filter/flattener, a way to avoid roundness and texture and the reality that we are hurtling through unfathomable infinities of space.

How can it be that language both wakes us up and anesthetizes us? Or maybe this isn’t really such a puzzling thing. After all, a hammer can help you hang a picture, or it can help you get a concussion. It’s all a question of how you wield the tool.

Is there a “right” or “best” way to wield the tool of language, and if so, what is it? Recently, I encountered this note from the absolutely brilliant poet Chen Chen, and it seems to me that it offers at least a partial answer to this question.

When language is used stagnantly, reflexively, without play or exploration or risk or thought, then it has the potential to aid and abet our stagnation. We keep saying the same things, thinking the same things, feeling the same things, doing the same things, ad infinitum.

But what happens when we begin to play in any one of these domains? What happens when we tinker with words, explore the cobwebbed corners of our thoughts, wonder our way deeper into our own feelings, or do something new just for the thrill of doing something new?

I can’t say for sure what your answer to these questions is, but for me, I come alive. Suddenly, I have a pulse again, and the world around me beats like a drum, and I’m left marveling that I ever spend a moment of this life not gobsmacked. I mean, have you seen a summer storm? Have you watched the sun rise and set? Have you held your hand up in front of your face and wiggled your fingers with the power of your mind?

How are we not awestruck all day, every day?

Maybe it’s good that we aren’t. Maybe we would die of the intensity or of the challenges it would pose to getting certain essential things (like eating) done.

But I am drawn to writing poetry because doing so both gives expression to this feeling of awe and encourages it. Writing poetry gives me a space in which to play and experiment and wonder and make messes—and the more I do that, the more I want to do that, and next thing you know, that glorious mess spills well beyond poetry and into the rest of my life.

If you would like a prompt to play with today, then I invite you to make a mess—even just a very small mess—of your daily routine. I invite you to make a muck of your habits, leave auto-pilot parked in some faraway lot, and simply do things differently. Brush your teeth with your non-dominant hand. Speak with a British accent (unless you’re British, in which case, become a Kiwi). Call the person you would normally just text. Make your coffee or your eggs or your bed a different way.

Walk a different path. Drive a different route. Listen to a different genre of music.

For a day, or hell, even just an hour, notice your comfortable ruts, and deliberately, playfully resist them.

What happens when you do? What thoughts and feelings bubble up? What strange impulses? What memories?

What language arises to accompany all of that? Write a poem from this space. Let the language be strange. Let your line breaks fall in odd places. Watch what happens. Then share it if you’d like! I am always so delighted to get to read your poems and reflections.

There are a bazillion places you could be in this world. Thank you for being here