Verge
by Lauren Camp
I鈥檒l not go back to counting on shame to propel me
when there are ferries
to future reason. The vessel master knows how to push
to an island and tree limbs nimble green. I got on and pretended
I was not used to clarity. Waves blessed
the boat or they ruined it. Now the days start elsewhere
in parallel and have not been expressed
as a tourniquet of bleeding heat. The only stairs
trace to a loft which is rising not to terrible disaster. I lie
about starting on building
a universe when I鈥檝e crept into
the blankness and only get closer. What a swishy riddle
if for a moment I鈥檝e forgotten my origin, the October
one parent shaped passage
to enthralling America. And wasn鈥檛 he safe and aren鈥檛 we
history now? I鈥檝e gone to that date for a decade
and congratulate myself each time
its entirety is less about mourning. Little bursts
of what I wanted to let go of
have gone from my mouth鈥擨 found them
under the chair, where I鈥檝e also hidden my body.
Times I couldn鈥檛 move, couldn鈥檛 do more
than let the fan spin short language and chill. The birds
are afloat in a frenzy. Now there is the sun, an eternity.
I began 鈥淰erge鈥� during a long spell of not writing. I was absorbed in the New Mexico Epic Poem Project (my Poet Laureate initiative), which meant frequent travel around my state to rural, arts-underserved areas to bring people to poetry and encourage them to trust their own voices. While exhilarated about this work and what resulted, I found it impossible to also compose my own poems.
I typically only start poems when I have something to puzzle or hold, and even though that seemed to be happening often during my journeys, I wasn鈥檛 writing any of it down. I was just hurtling from mile to mile, one small town or village to the next.
I was desperate to write poems instead of clear, directed emails, but worried I couldn鈥檛 remember how. Because I had been invited to spend a few weeks at Hedgebrook and wanted some material to work with, I did something unusual for me. I wrote鈥攄espite the emptiness of mind. Every day for almost a month ahead of going, I sat down at my desk and opened a Word document template I had made. It had nothing on it but a title: 鈥淕ot Nothing Over Here.鈥� That was, after all, how I felt.
Every day, I typed something under the title where the first line would go. The next day I started another draft. The entries were typically short and insubstantial. I neither revised them nor judged.
These were what I took across with me on the ferry and what I built out later that summer. In the case of 鈥淰erge,鈥� 鈥渢ourniquet鈥� and three or four other words of the original forty-nine remained. I was grateful for those鈥攁nd for the gentle time to meet my mind in a lush and nourishing place, where I could begin to be less tame and organized. Where I could let anything I wanted to investigate find its way to the page.
serves as New Mexico Poet Laureate. She is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently In Old Sky. A former Astronomer-in-Residence at聽 Grand Canyon National Park, Camp has received the Dorset Prize and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and Black Earth Institute. She has been a聽 finalist for the Arab American Book Award, New Mexico-Arizona Book Award, Big聽 Other Book Award, and Adrienne Rich Award. Her poems have appeared in New聽 Ohio Review, Academy of American Poets鈥� Poem-a-Day, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere.