A small story about Ai and Poetry.

I grew up in a very small town. This town had little to recommend it, but it had one thing: There was another, slightly bigger town, next door. This slightly bigger town had a SUNY. This particularly SUNY had a really good set of poets, and an excellent writing program.

The high school I attended had a program where the understimulated could spend half of their senior year taking classes at the SUNY. I signed up to take an introductory creative writing class, taught by a Well Known Poet. As the program required, I set up a meeting with the poet to ask him if this was okay.

It was, he said. But not quite. As luck would have had it, he had heard me read the year before that at a student reading-- a little poem about a shy girl who would rather dance with a broom than a boy. He thought I belonged in the advanced poetry seminar instead of the introductory course.

I was flattered. Of course I was flattered. I was seventeen, and allowed to participate in a largely graduate poetry seminar. The next youngest person in the class was 21, and a senior. He's the main character in my story about Ai.

The next part of the story was predictable-- the next-younger-poet and I became lovers. I was flattered. Of course I was flattered.

For the sake of background, it's important to know more or less all the writers in this environment were Deep Imagists and Transcendentalists. It was all Whitman around a bonfire and Robert Bly and Wendell Berry and William Carlos Williams and Galway Kinnell. We only read the confessional poets in order to talk about what a shame it was they didn't go beyond their limitations.

Farewelcome 2007

The AMC held a memorial ceremony for children who had died at the hospital within the year. They called it a Farewelcome. I thought the name was goofy.

I'm cursed with the role of the continual critic. It limits my participation.

We were supposed to bring our child's "favorite flower". Does a dead baby have a favorite flower? I bought a peony because the daisies were all stupid colors. I would have rather been damned than bring a rose bud. I don't know why.

We were a little late, because we're that kind of people. I didn't know what a person is supposed to wear to a Farewelcome, so I settled on blue jeans, black boots, jet necklace & black shirt and sweater. Halfway to mourning. It turned out to be appropriate. Anything was appropriate.

We started seeing people with a single flower inside the hospital lobby. It seemed there was a good turnout. We checked our peony in a vase by the door.

First surprise. Which was not really a surprise. 90% of the women were pregnant. A baby belly was the must-have fashion accessory. I say it isn't a surprise because I understand it. There were also older children being Farewelcomed, but most of the losses were infants. If a dead baby is a conversation with God, then pregnancy is the only possible reply.

If you can still speak, of course.

Second surprise. We were seated and I was trying to channel Jackie Kennedy when someone loomed in my personal space. An old co-worker. "I don't know the story," he said, and took my hand. "But strength to you both." More about him later.

So then they played the harp. Why is it always a harp? And then they read all the names. Nobody in Holland can pronounce Eleanor. As your child's name was read, you were supposed to go light a candle. Some little kids went up a couple of times and lit candles whenever they felt like it.

Then they read a story about a squirrel. B. didn't think it was dumb.

Then more harp. Then we left.

So this old coworker: We went for coffee afterwards. They lost their baby in August. She's actually up to the same point in her pregnancy where she lost the baby before. The pregnancy was great until they went in for their 20 week echo. They baby had massive genetic problems and no heart to speak of. So they induced at 22 weeks, knowing the outcome.

"Pregnancy is so much fun," I cracked, weeping.

She wiped her own tears away. "A rose colored cloud."

(edited to say that this happened, as the title says, in 2007. I was working on something else, and came back to this fragment. And as it isn't part of anything else, I posted it here.)

In Advance of the Broken Leg. (Slow.)

Today was the first day trying to go back to work with my unreliable knee. My bad knee. My crutches and brace and backpack clutched under my arm.

The journey was not a success.

At Schiphol I looked uneasily at my track. No train. No cancellation notice. Just no train. I stumped to another track. No train. I stumped back to the original track. No information. No train.

I joined a group of angry commuters in a circle around the NS official. He frowned at his little machine. Logistics problem, he said.

A hatchet-faced man insisted the 'logistics problem' was actually a fire in Utrecht.

The official disagreed. No, he said, there's someone wandering in the tunnel close to the airport.

I asked if any trains were coming. The official shrugged. You know as much as I do, he answered. But I didn't know anything.

I decided to buy a sandwich. And sit. My knee was hurting from all the running between tracks and standing around. I went to Delifrance, and waited in line.

An old man with a wheeled suitcase watched me. He was behind me. He looked at my crutch, his watch, then made up his mind. He dashed around the barrier and jumped in front of me.

His hand was firm on the handle, no indecision. I was Slow. He was going first. His ears did not turn red with shame.

Eventually, I sat and ate my sandwich. The benches in the airport are separated with metal rails. Anti-sleeping person protection. I couldn't stretch my leg out. I saw unhappy people continue to mill around the trains. I wrote email.

Eventually my leg hurt more from the sitting than the standing, so I made my way back to the tracks.

Still nothing running in the direction of Delft. But finally a train for Amsterdam. I got on, went back home. I gave up.

But this isn't what I wanted to say.

I wanted to write about rage. And being Slow. First: Slow.

As a commuter, you are defined by your speed. Other commuters are as quick as cats to smell weakness. And crutches = Slow.

You see it on faces, in the way people react. The tight unhappy fear of someone interrupting pace.

The old man I mentioned above. A girl who raced in front of me to jump on the escalator first. The eye-rolling students behind me, objecting to me standing in front of them. The cars and bikes that sped up when they saw me step into the crosswalk. The pedestrian who pushed me into the railing on the too-narrow sidewalk so he could get past.

Slow.

And now Rage. I have been surprised, distantly, how much anger is exposed by my bad leg. By the time I was on my way back home, I was chewing my lower lip to avoid shouting like a mad bag lady.

Finally, nearly at my door, a bike came up behind me on the sidewalk, aggressively ringing her bell. She wanted to turn on a side street, but didn't feel like waiting for the light. So she took the sidewalk. Only I was in her way.

I reeled with surprise and nearly fell. She took the moment to race past.

I lost control of my lip. Get pleurisy and rot, you tiresome cancer cuntbitch! I was snarling.

She turned her head, briefly. Shocked.

Good she sped along quickly. I believe if she had stopped I would have hit her with my metal crutch. Pounded and pounded until she was bleeding on the ground, her own leg broken. Bruised and battered. I wished her disability and disaster. I wanted her to hurt. I wished her Slow.

I'm going to take some time and try to learn from how much anger I've got right now. Certainly, I will practice more empathy and less pace. When my leg heals. Eventually.