Arriving

"...if the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message." Robert Bly

Arriving¹

Monday through Friday muted my muse,
the 9-5 hustle stamped out her form.

I forgot we used to be friends.

True friends call malarky, so she might say:
“Do the math, sister. How does that add up
to weekends, holidays, and 60+ hours?”

She’d be right, but the end was the same…
all work all the time and people would die if I didn’t–
until I would die if I did.

The call came before that, before my body quit on me.

First, my body rang, vibrated, demanded I hear: it was fighting
when it needed to flee.

The call came, too, in that old-fashioned way:
ancient, holy, unbidden, and unclear:
“You need to leave. You need to create.”

“Okay,” I said. “Tell me when and I will.”

I left in time; asked to be shown the work of my hands,
made it up in the waiting, rewove narratives I
thought I was unweaving.

Exchanged my office nameplate and title
For anonymity in brick-encased cubicle,
surrounded by whippersnappers and noise,
tricked into the same old hustle disguised as
“the writer’s life.”

I thought “create” meant “write.”
I thought “write” meant “publish.”
I thought “publish” meant “arrival.”
It all meant work harder, more, longer, push through.

My muse waved weakly as I trampled over her
At the end of each day’s failed metrics.

The call came through a friend.
She said she’d tell her life story
if I held it for her, listened
and braided her stories.

I hold that work in my hands.

It is finished, but what has it begun–
this book of a life, not a product but a gift?²

The call becomes clearer:
the work of my hands is the work of my ears.

I am arriving.

1. This poem is in response to Robert Bly’s “Things to Think” (especially the last lines) and a prompt that asked me to reframe how I understand my inclination to storytelling and writing. The prompt was courtesy of the Transformative Language Arts Network’s Changing the World with Words: Transformative Language Arts Foundations class, facilitated by the fantastic Amanda Faye Lacson.

2. I can’t wait to share more! We wrote a book!