A Poem will come on Thursday

Just the tips of the maple trees are turning orange. It's not a bright orange, more like a russet submerged in sap green, so that you aren't really conscious of its presence. The color hits your eye in the periphery, the way a stray movement catches your attention. Coupled with the cooler nights, there is a growing awareness of the end to summer and the start of something new. For me, the sap rises in the Fall, when I look about me for a campus and some subject to tackle. This Fall, I am taking Poetry II again, at Kent State. I have this thing for poetry. It grabs me, when its good, like Samson's hair, in a headlock.

So I am here again in the small classroom in Satterfield, seated at a conference table, with sixteen other journeymen. We are nervous at first, reluctant to speak our names. Our teacher is quiet, calm, and passionate about books, and poems, and words. She honors bravery and we start to relax. She honors the ordinary life. We sit straighter in our seats. Some of us recognize each other from previous forays into this world and we honor each other for the people we have become in the intervening years. This is an elective. Everyone is serious about writing. When the teacher requests that we begin writing in class, there is not even a pause. Heads go down and pens begin to move, flowing or scratching away at the scabs from recent wounds. One male students bring in the four-letter words he knows dearly and the booze and oral sex. He starts us off in his world. It is no easy thing to open up the door and say--"Here it is. Come and see."

I read to enter other worlds. I think I write for the same reason. I've thought that I might use this blog as a place to write what was once a journal requirement. It is optional to keep a journal, she says. (She can't imagine not keeping one.) And I journal every day, but it IS too personal to share. This is a step toward sharing, my life, my world.

Even as I write these words I wonder if anyone would really want to see, my world; would care to have a window into my life. If you are reading, you must have your reasons. They interest me.