When I Am Asked by Nicholas Ingalls

 
When I am asked how I began writing
Poems, I say I don’t actually know.
As a kid, perhaps, writing three line
Haikus for my mom on mother’s day, or
In school because we are told to write
And spit creativity from our pens.
The mind of a child, so much better
Than that of an adult. Still capable
Of thinking in new ways, imaginative
Ways of a child, not yet tampered with
By the standards of one right answer
Questions that the public school system thrives
On and always has. A system that stamps
Out all creativity, all new ways
Of thinking, and imagination.
Though, what I may truly say when asked how
I began writing poetry, is that
I had to begin for a class. Creative
Writing in high school. I forced myself to
Take something I thought I wouldn’t be good
At. To switch things up for a change, do
Something erratic and unlike my usual
Predictable, boring self that everyone
Knew me to be. I would write about trees
At night, the shear darkness that was lit up
By the ethereal blanket of white
Stars spackled through the night sky like spray on
Wall texture paint, the kind that comes out of
An aerosol can. Or, perhaps when asked
I’d say that I had always written poetry.  
 

When I Am Asked

By Lisel Mueller b. 1924 Lisel Mueller

 

When I am asked   

how I began writing poems,   

I talk about the indifference of nature.   

 

It was soon after my mother died,   

a brilliant June day,   

everything blooming.   

 

I sat on a gray stone bench   

in a lovingly planted garden,   

but the day lilies were as deaf   

as the ears of drunken sleepers   

and the roses curved inward.   

Nothing was black or broken   

and not a leaf fell   

and the sun blared endless commercials   

for summer holidays.   

I sat on a gray stone bench   

ringed with the ingenue faces   

of pink and white impatiens   

and placed my grief   

in the mouth of language,   

the only thing that would grieve with me.