Day four of the
Poetic Asides PAD Challenge had us create a "history" poem - here's my draft!
History of Me
Derrida once said something about how he can only give facts
How he couldn’t explain "how", when asked about how
He met his wife
As we tour the world that is me
Colored by impressions,
I think of his quote, “As soon as there is language,
Generality has entered the scene”
I hold hands with my husband
In the place we met
History is a funny thing
Both fuzzy and changed as soon as we talk about it
Over there? That’s the tree I never climbed –
Or did I – after planting marigolds in the
Soil here, with my mother at five.
In there? That’s where blood fell, years
Ago, in a different lifeline of mine
Before tomes and texts
Expanded my mind beyond the “certain”
Opening myself up like this,
Like a med student’s cadaver
Wouldn’t be possible without professors
That cracked my mind like a walnut
With impressions, images and ideas
Light swims over there, with the lightning bugs
On a lawn somewhere west of Chicago
Where a goodbye was said,
And an old treasure was found
In the snowy banks
Of a Midwest college town
Discomfort and coldness was born
Alongside Kant’s Categorical Imperative
Sometimes you realize the very answers you seek
Are the very questions you lack
And sometimes, you start in a place
And wind up in another
Surrounded only by words
And the hazy fictions they weave when woven together
