You sip your coffee in a nearby diner.
The place is empty.
It is too cold outside for wandering,
even to familiar places.
Part of you is still numb,
Historic wounds still holding sway.
You sip your coffee in a strange kind of meditation,
waiting for the feelings to break like river ice.
I am a slow processor of emotions.
I was first exposed to winter rivers clogged with massive blocks of ice piled one on the other until the surface resemble building blocks thrown in a two-year-old’s temper tantrum, when I moved here to New England. Ten years later I love seeing it.
I really am at my favorite diner. It really is empty. Even the cook is downstairs doing some kitchen prep. I use my time in the diner to write, which involved working on breaking my emotions loose.
From those three things, this poem.
But lest you think it was that easy and clear, this began as a long, long rambling sort of poem. It is a bad writing habit of mine to write around the main thing. I once had a writing teacher, Richard Dillard, who said my life would be spent finding the poem in my poem. He was right. More than he knew.
