Poem Therapy at 1:45 P.M. - Jane Hirshfield

Waking the Morning Dreamless After Long Sleep
Jane Hirshfield

But with the sentence: "Use your failures for paper." Meaning, I understood, the backs of failed poems, but also my life. Whose far side I begin now to enter— A book imprinted without seeming season, each blank day bearing on its reverse, in random order, the mad-set type of another. December 12, 1960. April 4, 1981. 13th of August, 1974— Certain words bleed through to the unwritten pages. To call this memory offers no solace. "Even in sleep, the heavy millstones turning." I do not know where the words come from, what the millstones, where the turning may lead. I, a woman forty-five, beginning to gray at the temples, putting pages of ruined paper into a basket, pulling them out again.


I woke this morning from a seamless dream intending to write it down, only for all but one scene to vanish. The scene was of my youngest sister sitting alone in the dark, at my dining room table, surreptitiously eating a fancy cake, with a huge smile tinged with just the faintest hint of little guilt. If people, events, signs and symbols of dreams all refer to the dreamer, just what am I keeping all to myself? what is hidden in the half light? Any why cake?

The other night I dreamed of knocking down a butter-colored woolly charging bull. Twice. First by kicking it in the head, the second time by hitting it across its head with a stick. It was after my puppy and I was protecting him. No interpretation necessary. I know exactly what my dreaming mind was presenting there. Totally about last week at work. But what of the dreams where I woke with the question, What is Scientology?, or the woman taking a train from Texas to Tibet? or the words "bindi" and "lindi" written on a board for further instruction?, or Helena Bohham Carter offering her seduction tips in which she just utters the saddest word, "gossip", to make men fall at her feet?

Snow has arrived and so has my little black cloud. And with it my restlessness, and litany of all that I haven't yet accomplished and the entire host of nonproductive self-flagellating interlopers. Actually, my irritating guests arrived yesterday, so no surprise I was drawn to pick up Dalton Conley's The Pecking Order: Which Siblings Succeed and Why.

Disclosure: Before I go any further, being drawn to this subject is totally about me, (and truthfully, it's the Danna Show 24/7. If you're honest, it's the same for you - it can't be helped since we see the world only through our own eyes). This is not about my parents, siblings, spouse (current or ex), relatives, ancestors, pets, livestock, or houseplants! It's about gathering new stones to put in my aquarium (I stole that analogy from poet Billy Collins, btw).

I'm my father's firstborn, my mother's fourth born, and the exact middle of the family. I think you make your own luck, and you have the freedom to choose the road you'll traverse in this life. You should know I've come to these conclusions in hindsight, of course, since pretty much all of my choices, even the ones I thought were conscious, well were hardly in my best self-interest. Great material to mine for writing, yes. My unconscious self has held the map these last four decades and has been at work deciding which road I'd head down, the direction, the switchbacks, u-turns and dead ends. I believe I have wrested the map away from that other self, and you know, better late than never. But, back to Conley's book: you'll be relieved to know that birth order really has nothing to do with how you fare in life, it's the number of siblings, family culture and dynamics, economics, outside mentors, and luck that are the determiners.

So why this poem? As always with my poem therapy routine, I click on poets.org, choose poem, choose a letter, then click on a poem title that speaks to me. Today I chose w, and found Hirschfield's poem, which may be coincidence, but failure & failed have been the hamster which has been running my wheel long into the night lately. No, this isn't about woe is I, it's about, my god, life is short and what is the problem with finishing the novel? and what is with all these roadblocks and diversions? and why are you listening to any other voice than my own? Until I figure out what my deal is, I'll do what Hemingway suggested in A Moveable Feast, All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know..