Gary Margolis: The Desire to Write Poetry at Forty

My daughter writes me
after her children are asleep,
her husband away
downstairs in the rec room,
 
she’s been finding herself
with a blank screen,
a white piece of paper.
Things on her mind
 
she hasn’t found another way
to say yet. Without
worrying what someone 
might think. Might
 
tell her to keep to herself.
She tells me she’s just come
across Dickinson and feels
released. Although, honestly,
 
she doesn’t understand
everything she reads. 
It’s more the mysterious 
feeling between her 
 
and Emily, the centuries in 
between two women 
alone in their rooms.
Speaking to each other
 
in invisible words.
To write a poem.
Leaving it to somebody else
to call poetry. To turn
 
a rough night’s sleep 
into a window’s dream.
A phrase, she admits,
she doesn’t know where
 
it comes from. Emily
whispers for her to
trust. To believe
she’ll remember it

in the morning.
At least enough
to begin writing from.
Her children stirring,
 
her husband climbing
the stairs to bed.
Leaves brushing the screen
and the window.  

Copyright 2020 Gary Margolis

Gary Margolis is a poet, teacher, and psychologist who lives in Vermont. His eighth collection Museum of Islands: New and Selected Poems was published by Bauhan Publishing.