I’m having trouble writing 

                                                     poetry he wrote trouble being a poetry writer

I don’t know I said write notes of sound notes of mystery see what comes

geese flying brakes screeching boots crunching snow on a path I said Do you 

recall the last time the light of shadow reflected off your skin? he asked

in the morning I said stretching in bed lowlight we exist he wrote because of light 

as light he said sound is light’s cousin I replied shadow has a sound of whispering 

shadows vibrate like voices he wrote like bird bones are hollow btw I said sound 

like wind I added wind moving he wrote against the fabric of skin feeling wind 

is the epitome of being in the moment we agreed breath is wind we agreed breath 

is wind we said write it down I said see what the shadow gives our breath imitates 

the wind he wrote the crux of it     us as wind     messages in our ears long before 

the ringing messages of purpose he said mystery of purpose I noted humility of purpose 

or mystery fabric of soul he wrote hella aura yours he said lol poetics of geography 

and self shadow of words on the page I typed in person he said insomnia I said sorry

                                                                                                                     oh well we said soon

 

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Tina Cane serves as poet laureate of Rhode Island and is the founder/director of Writers-in-the-Schools, RI. She is the author of Once More with Feeling , Body of Work , and Dear Elena: Letters for Elena Ferrante. Tina is also the creator/ curator of the distance reading series, Poetry is Bread, the podcast Poetry Dose, and is a 2020 poet laureate fellow with the Academy of American Poets.

This is Tina Cane’s second appearance in TLR. You can read more of her work here.

 

read next: Tina Cane “from What We Talk About When We Talk About Paths: A Narrative in Captions“