The Weight of Trees

A note to begin

This is the final poem in The Starbucks Poetry Project blog. I have been writing twice a week for 6 months and have loved the challenge, the discipline, and the resulting work. I’ve also loved hearing from readers; it’s a great privilege to know my art has had an impact. I’m hoping to extend my reach by getting this collection into print… and into a coffee shop near you. Stay tuned, and thanks so much for sharing this space with me.

Overheard: Discussion between two people in their 20s who used to date:

Her: Is she your girlfriend?

Him: Um, I guess. I mean she lives in a different country, but yes.

Where it took me: I used a writing exercise that asks the writer to juxtapose two very different objects. There are lots of ways to find your objects, but I took ‘long-distance relationship’ from the overheard line and, after a long walk in my neighbourhood, the recent ice storm in Toronto as the other object. I used one of my favourite techniques, the scramble, to write the story before pairing all the first lines, second lines, and third lines. As I had hoped, breaking apart the lines this way forced the similarities between the ice storm and relationships to the fore in a very satisfying way.

The poem

The Weight of Trees

I walk the valley

in search of destruction:

branches in pieces,

power lines sailor-knotted.

Cub-scout badges

against the storm.

Eight days now.

Neatly trimmed and bundled,

life by the curb, changed completely.

I thought I wanted

the weight of trees.

White towels whip from sagging wires:

caution, or surrender.

I resist the pull.

A train wreck, but I’m struck.

How we remain connected.

How intricately we are strung.

What I Can Give

Overheard: Two men in their 60s, with eastern European accents, trying to keep their voices very low.

Man #1: So, he sees her two or three times a week.

Man #2, nodding: That’s the best way.

Where it took me: There is a bit more to this scenario, a few hand gestures and a description of what said couple is not doing. It was funny, yes, but it made me think of what other perspective there could be for the type of relationship described. Unless they tell us, we don’t know the reality of other people’s lives.

Empathy

Overheard: Teenage girls over coffee planning their weekend of partying (already bought their Red Bull for their vodka).
Girl 1: My parents are SO brutal. I am so getting emancipated when I am 18 and buying a condo downtown.

Girl 2: OMG! The condos downtown are so nice!

Where it took me: Teenagers. You want to smack them and be them at the same time. How painfully I remember those years. And yet… really, girls? I used this overheard line along with one of my favourite writing methods: the letter. I write a lot of letters, including longhand ones that I send via snail mail to my friends who live far away. But some letters are not meant to be sent; just to be written, just so I can find a voice.

Shorthand

Overheard: Expensive beer and Steve Stamkos.

Where it took me: The people beside me at Starbucks were going through all the details of their upcoming holiday plans, and debating whether to spend their money on hockey tickets (whose shorthand was ‘expensive beer and Steve Stamkos’); or a few nights at a hotel. A few days later, at a workshop, I was given a prompt to list all the sights, sounds, and smells I could think of related to a holiday that I celebrate; and then to write about holiday disappointment, incorporating everything on the list. The result is this entirely fictional poem; being Jewish, I don’t have Christmas holiday memories; and I have no reason to believe something awful happened to that guy beside me. But I do know that expectations veer wildly from reality, sometimes in the worst possible ways.

Dad Words

Overheard: This is a 3-minute warning. We’re going to start in 3 to 4 minutes. So get a drink, go pee, whatever you need to do.

Where it took me: OK, fair enough, I did not overhear this at Starbucks. These were the first words of the MC at a literary reading I was at earlier this week. To me, this sounded like a dad talking to kids. He wasn’t at all being condescending even though he was talking to a room of adults in a bar; I was just struck by the way our discourse changes as the circumstances of our life change.

Coffee

Overheard: Barista to customer: We have the festive one, if you’re looking for gifts.

Where it took me: The line itself made me think of how much marketing there is in coffee now. When I was growing up, for all I knew of it, it was coffee. My parents ordered it when we went to restaurants and we had to wait for them to finish before we could leave. I don’t recall anything about festive. Or bold, or mild, or Canadian, for that matter. My first experience with coffee was as something to keep me warm during a week-long youth retreat. But that first experience is completely tied up, for me, with being 16, becoming an adult, and my relationships with others. The premise for the poem comes from a prompt to write from the point of view of an animal; that gave me the way in.

What We Need

Overheard: The older you get, the more you need it.

Where it took me: This is a line spoken by one of a group of 60-ish women. I have no idea what they were actually talking about, but I started by free-writing what others expect women to do to maintain themselves as they age (the late Nora Ephron wrote note-perfectly about maintenance in I Feel Bad About My Neck). The technique is from Pat Schneider: use the phrase ‘this is not about’ to deny a subject about which you are, in fact, writing.

The Newlyweds

Overheard: You’re not part of this conversation.

Where it took me: I used this line in conjunction with an exercise to imagine talking to one’s parents at the age they conceived you. That’s a conversation we are not part of, whatever choice they end up making.

The poem

The Newlyweds

They have this conversation by the shore in Maine

the summer that the cities burn.

It’s a bit of a beach, no pull for tourists.

Its north end is violent rock,

stone and ocean flung over and over.

Toward the south the rocks flatten.

A patch of sand the size of a picnic blanket

dries when the tide retreats.

To get there, they pick their way across the boulders.

She complies to shoes for the climb,

dismisses them the moment her toes touch sand;

the tug of history primal beneath her feet.

He keeps his laces tied.

They come here to taste the salt that proves

how small a decision it is

whether to bring a child into this inflamed world.

Their talk ebbs and flows.

Words skip across the surface, bounce and sink.

Her toes dig holes where she sits,

touch one intact shell, 

its details miniscule and complete.

Scared

Overheard: I hate being scared.

Where it took me: I’ve had this line for a while. and didn’t know what to do with it. I opened one of my poetry guides to a random page. The exercise was to write a multiple-choice poem. (In hypertext, this could turn into a choose-your-own-adventure poem… and I might just give that a try.) Given how many things we fear, this exercise seemed like a perfect fit for a poem about being scared. Interestingly, at my New York launch last month, I asked my guests to do exactly what I describe at the beginning of the poem. The three answers come directly from them. I particularly like how, when I am searching for a way to get started with a poem, different threads from my life come together at what appears to be just the right moment.

Truth Is a House Made of Tea

Overheard: There’s your own truth that you live by.

Where it took me: This statement is either very profound, or very twisted. Its potential has been on my mind for several weeks, but every time I try to write, my writing turns into platitude. Halfway through writing from the prompt today, I stopped, not happy with the trite, sitcom-like character I was drawing. But I had just written about a smell I remembered from childhood, and that got me writing about scent, and that reminded me of seeing Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei’s solid house of tea at a recent exhibit. I had made a note to write that tea house as a metaphor for something. Thinking of it today made me consider the house of tea as a metaphor for what we consider to be our own truth.

The poem

Truth Is a House Made of Tea

Ai Wei Wei builds his Tea House

the way a child draws home:

straight lines, solid expectations,

a cube packed tight,

safe from intruders.

We build our truth this way.

We forget its walls are made of leaves.

At night they dream of wind,

in the daytime wish for heat.

Crave water; a grave risk worth taking.

Fingers unfurl and unfurl.

The wolf never imagined a house like this.

There is always a way in.

Lowering the Bar

Overheard: I made broccoli yesterday and I didn’t forget to turn off the pot.

Where it took me: Another exception to the usual process; this line was a line a friend said to me in response to a conversation she’d overheard. She may have felt a tiny bit inadequate about her own cooking; though she should not, especially given that she spends her days bringing compassion to people at the hardest time of their life. We set the priorities that let us be content in the world. When I am content, I am a better person, friend, partner, and parent. Anything I can do to achieve that works for me.

Safeway, 17th and R Street

Overheard: (Woman on cell phone) I changed the text inside and I changed the picture to make it more modest.

Where it took me: I heard this in the grocery store and just had to write it down. She could have been anywhere having this conversation, for instance, at home rather than in public. I used the scramble technique to write down the story; then put all the first lines, second lines, and third lines together before editing to make some sense out of them. Taking apart the story this way allowed me to move back and forth between the physical fact of the woman in the store, and the curiosity I had about her conversation.

Name

Overheard:

Barista: Can I get your name, please, for your coffee?

Customer: What do you need my name for? I’m standing right here!

Where it took me: Giving the barista your name at Starbucks has spawned a culture of its own, with fake names, hilarious misspelling and mis-hearings, ongoing jokes between customers and baristas, and more. Obviously, this woman just needed her coffee. The prompt got me thinking about the power of naming; how names have the power to make something exist. I tried a scramble poem (writing the scene then reordering the lines) but ended up liking the scene itself.

The poem

Name

Why do you need my name?

I’m standing right here.

The old woman refuses

to unhand the only power

she still holds, this name

her parents gave, the one scripted

on the marriage licence,

inked on the papers that proved

her babies alive;

the one who did not survive.

The name her husband still murmurs

in the safe cave of their bedroom.

In fair weather she rides the back

of his Vespa, imagines through her helmet

the stir of the sky in her hair,

wishes to be reckless though she won’t,

yearns to know

how the breeze really feels.

My Apologies, Professor

Overheard: What’s the worst that could happen?

Where it took me: Everything that came to me right away was too obvious with this prompt. So I used one of my poetry guides for a challenge to help me shape this extremely open line into something more focused. The challenge that seemed to fit was to write an outrageous excuse for being late for class. What’s the worst that could happen?