Maybe this one bears repeating...
Write, Read, and Do Your Job (365/365 #303)
Sometimes I get those lousy gigs- if you've done this
long enough, you know the smell of an empty room,
forested with vacant chairs, the nervous host joking,
"Torrential rainstorms usually don't keep our audience
away!" I pause to remember the phone call where I said
that passing the hat would be fine. Not much, but add on
book sales, and it seemed like a good idea at the time.
At the end of a half hour past starting time, with half
a dozen people in the room, I pray for time enough
to put together an appropriate set. But the open mic
is a smattering of haiku, three sonnets, and an ode
"To Jimmy, Luv 4-Evah!" by a young poet who clearly
keeps a diary. It's time to take the stage, be brave
and professional and give the same performance
I have given for a thousand people. It starts slowly,
but the room is filling up with people I don't notice
until I am reading directly to them. One reminds me
of Danny. I can't see for sure, but the posture is right
and he is wreathed in motorcycle fumes. To his left,
is an elderly couple who look like my grandparents,
My mother is sitting next to them, my father, six rows
back towards the shadows where larger figures loom,
deep in fiction. In whatever scattered seats remain
are all the women I've ever written poems for, in shades
of Heather and Virginia, Janet, Margo, Amy, Anne,
Audrey, Katherine, Angela, what I thought was Cathy
Anne and Kristen. All of them silent and none of them
betrayed emotion or expression in the moment we made
eye contact. When all was said and over, the room
had six people, counting the hosts. I barely made gas
money. I sold a book. I guess what I'm saying is: you give
what you have because you have chosen this. Every poem
I write, I read to the people I have named. I don't ask
for apology or forgiveness. I re-create the moment. Every
time I read, even to one person only, I am doing my job.
Sometimes I get those lousy gigs- if you've done this
long enough, you know the smell of an empty room,
forested with vacant chairs, the nervous host joking,
"Torrential rainstorms usually don't keep our audience
away!" I pause to remember the phone call where I said
that passing the hat would be fine. Not much, but add on
book sales, and it seemed like a good idea at the time.
At the end of a half hour past starting time, with half
a dozen people in the room, I pray for time enough
to put together an appropriate set. But the open mic
is a smattering of haiku, three sonnets, and an ode
"To Jimmy, Luv 4-Evah!" by a young poet who clearly
keeps a diary. It's time to take the stage, be brave
and professional and give the same performance
I have given for a thousand people. It starts slowly,
but the room is filling up with people I don't notice
until I am reading directly to them. One reminds me
of Danny. I can't see for sure, but the posture is right
and he is wreathed in motorcycle fumes. To his left,
is an elderly couple who look like my grandparents,
My mother is sitting next to them, my father, six rows
back towards the shadows where larger figures loom,
deep in fiction. In whatever scattered seats remain
are all the women I've ever written poems for, in shades
of Heather and Virginia, Janet, Margo, Amy, Anne,
Audrey, Katherine, Angela, what I thought was Cathy
Anne and Kristen. All of them silent and none of them
betrayed emotion or expression in the moment we made
eye contact. When all was said and over, the room
had six people, counting the hosts. I barely made gas
money. I sold a book. I guess what I'm saying is: you give
what you have because you have chosen this. Every poem
I write, I read to the people I have named. I don't ask
for apology or forgiveness. I re-create the moment. Every
time I read, even to one person only, I am doing my job.