Remember your old routine? We don’t either. If you’ve been celebrating National Poetry Month, however, you might have noticed something reassuring: for many of the challenges and uncertainties we face, often a poet has already been there and, if we’re lucky, reported back.
This week we’ve reached back into the Poetry in Transit 2007 archives to bring you “The Old Routine” from Lionel Kearns‘ A Few Words Will Do (Talonbooks).
See more poems from the archives and our National Poetry Month interview series here:
Read more 2020 National Poetry Month features here.
“The Old Routine” by Lionel Kearns
“I could tell you of events so complex
they would turn your eyeballs into pie crust,
clog your ears with seaweed, glue
your nervous fingers into a sticky fist.
But what of that now? I am here
on this rickety porch where years ago
I would sit quietly writing you a poem.
Now I am doing it again, perhaps
writing the same poem. Everything
grows and explodes and remains the same
as I jump out of my dying body just
in time to see it again, the world.”
Reproduced with permission from A Few Words Will Do by Lionel Kearns (Talonbooks, 2001)
Learn More About Poetry in Transit here.