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“