Ah, gentle reader. I might have mentioned that I have been dabbling in poetry again for, what, the last six years? (I completed a poem six years ago which had taken me years to write it, they were the best years of my life; it was a beautiful song, but it ran too long–if you’re gonna have a hit, you gotta make it fit, so they cut it down to 3:05-wait, no, that wasn’t me, except that I finished that poem after having parts of it on a legal pad for years, unfinished.)
Anyway, so: I’ve been working on a poem about estate sales. Basically, it tells about how I used to haunt estate sales at old, dated houses (back around the turn of the century, I would spend Saturday mornings at estate sales and the other weeknights listing books, games, et cetera, that I bought on Ebay. But, now, after 16 years at Nogglestead with little change, I can understand why someone might have found their 1960s or 1970s home comfortable.
So I thought it would be two stanzas. But then I thought maybe a hinge stanza about my aunt who died in 2019, parceling out furniture while she was still alive. And I thought about it for a long time without really putting pen to paper, but considering it a bit, you know.
Well, a couple of weeks ago, I got the opportunity to go to the coffee shop for a little bit and put pen to paper. And, after another coffee shop visit a couple of days later, I had the hinge stanza. And when I got to the computer to add it to the official Word document, I discovered that I’d finished(ish) the first stanza last October. Jeez Louise, given this pacing, I’ll be lucky to finish the poem this year.
Ay, me. I am not breaking any land-speed records with these poems, and I’m certainly not a professional. But that’s okay; I’ve been reading a lot of The Complete Works of books, and even the best poets have a lot of chaff with their wheat (apologies to Leah Lathrom Wallace for stealing her chapbooks’ metaphor). Maybe I’ll just focus on the wheat. Which might well be just chaff.
I will be glad to exorcise this particular poem, however. Between a comment my wife made sometime ago (along the lines of her hoping to die before me so she doesn’t have to deal with all my stuff), the slow-motion end of Lileks’ marriage, including a downsizing sale (this weekend, in fact), and suddenly, I have been walking trhough my house like I was walking through my own estate sale. I mean, I have a lot of books, and my boys no longer like to read. The personal relics which were things my family members owned will mean little to them–they did not know much of my family. I have no urge to go to the book sales this year. I’m starting to get rid of the reified potential in my garage–I will donate some of the things to the new Lutheran High School thrift store if it gets off the ground. I brought in some wine glasses I’d bought to–I guess paint with stained glass paint, since three of them had masking tape around the lip line.
Hopefully, a combination of finishing this particular poem and maybe cleaning my garage a bit so I can do some project work in it will help fight the old ennui.
