Show, Don’t Tell

Absence is everything. We know that by now.
It is enough to write of how
the days are marked by a darkness
puddling in the valley bottom like river mist,

that the few bright stars are revealed
as porchlights on the hillsides when morning arrives,
that I know my neighbours only
from their footfalls on rainy, taxi-hour paths.
That it is always turning late in the year. So

you will understand me when I say that
that sound you hear behind me
there, again!
is not static or the cross-traffic
of a thousand relay stations
but the night, raw and gaping,
hammering, hammering on the skylight.

Artist’s Statement

I ’d written poetry on and off from my mid-teens, without sending it anywhere (thank God—it was awful). Every now and then I’d get discouraged and give up, but I did keep reading a lot of contemporary poetry, and it was all a bit like quitting drinking every time I had a hangover—deep down I knew I’d keep going back to it.

Then, about five years ago, I was sitting in the car at dusk waiting to pick up a friend from work when I started writing this poem. It started like all my work had up to then—a straightforward attempt to record a particular moment. I think, I hope, that it does that, but it was also an attempt (especially the last few lines) to capture something a bit less tangible. I’m no fan of obscurity for its own sake, but for the first time I arrived at a blend of the straightforward and the almost-grasped—exactly the blend I wanted.

As it turned out, I didn’t finish the poem until about a year ago, but that moment was just the spark I needed. I wrote other poems, and started getting a few published, and I haven’t stopped. I’m still not certain about how it works on its own terms, but I can’t help feeling an affection for it, just because it spurred me on when I most needed it.