Helsinki
An editor said never start a poem at a window,
so instead I’m looking at the door,
which is made of glass. We are to avoid rain,
too, but it streaks the pane in such delicious
patterns that I can’t help but pretend to be someone else
in a foreign city, perhaps Helsinki, sipping black coffee
with a mysterious woman younger than my daughter
(who also does not exist), whose interests
in me are purely literary, although she straightens
my collar with lingering, scented fingers. Garden
memories and birds must never populate our lines,
but corpses are fine, as are tube tops and bananas
and any combination thereof. I finish my coffee
and wander alone through cobblestone streets,
stepping over clichés when possible, kicking them
aside when my hip joint argues, or simply accepting
their useful limitations when nothing else works.
Unknown and lacking credentials, I shrug, go on
past the closed doors behind which unseen bodies
perform the most bizarre and sensual solo dances,
or not, and shadows cook sausages over fire
and the grease spattering onto the tiled counters
issues a fragrance that awakens neighborhood dogs
and maybe a dozing stall-keeper at the market
where cloudberries are sometimes found.
I know little of Finland, and less of myself,
and then there’s poetry, which remains a blank
frame, a frosted pane I’ll never truly unlatch.
* * *
My poem “Helsinki” was first published at Panoply. It was inspired in part by a Facebook thread on which editors commented on what caused them to instantly reject poems. One said beginning a poem at a window was cause for rejection. Hence the first line.
I so love this, Bob! And boy, am I in trouble – I love window beginnings and endings and even have one poem where I stayed at the window for 28 lines lol!
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I’d be lost without windows! So much of what I write is affected by what goes on outside them, by what I observe, even if just in a glance.
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Me too! Glad I’m not alone 😊
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We’re in good company!
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Wonderful read – great sound effects!
Perhaps you’ve yet to rip that frosted pane from its hinges … but unlatched? You have surely unlatched it … poems winging in to you from varied realms, flowing out to the rest of us.
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I like this very much. However, I fear I am doomed as a poet, since in the main, it is filled with gardens and birds. 😉
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We’re both doomed! Lol.
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Having said the above, I did once write a poem about my own autopsy.
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Ah, there you go!
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this is great!
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Thank you, Nancie!
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