The Wonderful Problem (a poem)
The Wonderful Problem
The problem with wonder
Is a wonderful problem
Poetry is a thing of wonder
Not always wonderful
Has never been a thing
Poetry is the ineffable effing thing.
One of the wonderful problems
with writing poems:
One is never finished
There was no beginning
Nor is there an end
Only a bottomless middle
But sometimes there is wonder.
Some poems are places to recline
But not fall asleep in
Like a hammock
With a big hole in it
You might drift off
And never return.
For example,
This might be the end of the poem
The “drift off” and the “never return.”
But there’s more left
Do you sense it? Must I keep going?
But where…and for how long?
Always looking for an ending
The need to flip the faded sign
On the door, open/abierto
To closed. I forget the word for closed.
I started writing this poem
At the end of the night
And I should turn off the light now
But that’s what the poem can be:
The thing instead of the should.
I thought I might read
For a few minutes, and now here I am
Trying to find the word
For closed.
This is the way a poem can work:
Begins with a tangent
And goes on from there
Until it runs out of momentum
The poet/person
Has no choice about this momentum
The fingers just keep going
Line after line
Until the holy hammock is ready
Or until something touches the bottom
Until the questions of the day
Those that remain unanswered
Drift off and all that’s left
Is the floating.
***
Check out Sun Capture my recent collection of poems and essays. If you’re interested in a PDF instead of a paperback, email me at jonahasks @ gmail dot com
If you enjoyed this poem, you might enjoy my podcast Jonah Asks
If you enjoy podcasts with writers, I have a new one coming up with Jeff Alessandrelli, whose recent work And Yet… is a dizzyingly experimental odyssey into selfhood, ruminating on concepts of love, desire and loneliness.
