A Thousand Poems

Yesterday, I decided to write a thousand poems. Yes, I know: it's going to take me three or four years, at least. And it's highly likely that not a single poem turns out to be really good. No matter. I'm going to do it anyway, because I believe that doing it a thousand times anyway will end up counting for something.

It turns out that, not counting activities related to my immediate survival (e.g., taking a breath) or my personal hygiene (e.g., taking a shower), there are actually very few things I've done a thousand times.

Here's the list I've come up with:

*cooked dinner

*done a load of laundry

*gone grocery shopping

*nursed each of my children

*read a bedtime story aloud

*hiked a mile

*had sex

*sung a song

*sent an email

*phoned a friend

*written a journal entry

*graded a student's paper

I don't know how long a person has to do something before it becomes part of her identity – “I am” rather than “I do” – but I've always wanted to be a poet, and writing a thousand poems seems as good a way as any to get started on becoming one.

No, I'm not going to post every poem I write. But since today's is the first of the thousand (not to be confused with one-in-a-thousand), it marks something of an occasion. So here it is, such as it is:

#1

Called to account, I'm counting

everything this morning,

making chalk marks on my wall,

leaving traces: two pieces of toast,

two kumquats, a single

porcelain cup full of black tea,

and all those words I worry

I won't have said.

Not just what my daughter,

four years and three months,

brought home in a plastic bag

(three red camellias, three wet stones,

two silver slippers, six brown buds,

and a slug) but also

all those wishes in the rushes,

unnamed, and thus uncounted.

Hurry, quick: slalom and zipper,

halcyon and cyan (five lemons

on a blue plate – can you see it?)

yes and chit and chop, and choreograph,

lined up alongside blister, bluster, blather,

and also blah blah blah, which is to say:

I was here, and here, and here.