After last week's find, I decided to do a bit more digging to see what else I'd stashed away.  

It's overwhelming to me, almost, how many poems and how much time I apparently used to have. 
Or maybe it's overwhelming how much less time I seem to have now.

Still, reading old work actually puts me in mind of those days -- I recall where I worked and what sort of head space I was in. I remember sitting on the floor -- all of my work and stamps and submission envelopes spread out before me in some sort of hopeful order. I remember reading many of them aloud at coffee houses and galleries. I remember being jealous beyond measure of other people's poems -- deeper, more evocative, more surprising than my own.

And really, there are plenty of pieces I might oughta burn -- I brought a naivete to the page that wasn't always charming. Or graceful. Or true. 

But there are few in there that I wouldn't be horrified to share. In reflection. So on that note, I think last week started an informal series of, well, we'll call 'em Poems from the '90s. Old stuff. Dotage.

Here's one:

March Birthday

 

The house in its dotage crumbles

in on itself

like cake, Friday’s storm

seeping through seams

of tape and sheetrock, the wide window

toward the lake drafty

as a silk blouse – it is winter

cold and stiff and everything

(the kettle, the mother, the boxes

of ill-fitting clothes) everything

wanting

to seem new

doesn’t

 

-- Liz Garton Scanlon, 1999