And the Line is Gone

“That’s how it is sometimes,” Dorianne Laux says, “God comes to your window, / all bright light and black wings, / and you’re just too tired to open it.” This – from “Dust,” which appears in her book, What We Carry – says so much about the work of writing as a young parent. Says so much really about the discipline you need to do anything difficult.

She says it again in “Finding What’s Lost,” where the needs of the day, of her daughter, of being a present parent, trump the music of the line she’s working on. Of course, by the end of the poem, she’s found her way to something else entirely. She's lost the line she tried to keep in her head, but the whole process has become its own poem.

I’m in the middle of the poem when my daughter reminds me
that I promised to drive her to the bus stop.
She waits a few beats then calls out the time.
Repeats that I’ve promised.
I keep the line in my head, repeat it under my breath
as I look for my keys, rummage through my purse,
my jacket pockets. When we’re in the car, I search
the floor for a Jack-in-the-Box bag, a ticket stub,
a bridge toll dollar, anything to write on.
I’m still repeating my line when she points
out the window and says, “Look, there’s the poppy
I told you about,” and as I turn the corner I see it,
grown through a crack between the sidewalk and the curb.
We talk about it while I scan driveways for kids
on skateboards and bikes, while the old man who runs
the Rexall locks up for the night and a mangy dog
lifts a frail leg and sprays the side of a tree.
Then we talk about her history essay and boyfriend,
and she asks again about her summer vacation, if we’re
going somewhere or just staying home. I say
I don’t know and ask what she’d rather do, but by now
we’re at the bus stop and she leans over
and, this is so unlike her, brushes her lips
quickly against my cheek. Then, without looking back,
she’s out the door, and the line, the poem,
is gone, lost somewhere near 8th and G, hovering
like an orange flower over the gravel street.