Living in a new city is sometimes daunting. Where are the grocery stores, the restaurants, the music, theatre, poetry? My new city has a newly remodeled senior center. I took the risk of asking if they didn’t have any, could I lead a writing group. So now, once a week, one hour a week, one or maybe even four of us spend time writing to prompts I provide. It’s a “gathering of story tellers” and there are many stories that we share. I use, among other examples, a poem I have written in ten minutes or twelve, no revisions (okay maybe one or two). For me, it fits right in to my current frame of mind of first drafts, not worrying about, and seldom revising. Here is my first draft (no revisions) for this coming week.
“There’s something I have learned from what I’ve lived”
Ataol Behramoğlu
For Pat
Searching for love is love is the routine of making the bed
Each morning, is opening the blinds and seeing the hostas
Flower, the grass grow. I am love, or else looking for love
Is like looking for a needle in a haystack, I can’t find what
I don’t already have.
I’ve learned I should have kept at least one childhood friend
Tucked under my arm and carried her across decades because
I can’t retrieve what I didn’t have. I’ve had friends, many,
Many friends-come and go, come and go, faded like photos
Diminishing my past.
I’ve learned the sun is worth waking early, it warms the
Ghosts that haunt me, but the rain, the rain I can hear;
A rhythm that rocks me or terrifies me. We need both
Quiet and storm.
Love is the journey. When I stop traveling what might be
A difficult road, a rocky road, it is not love, but it’s not fear
Either. I name it lazy. I name it forgiveness. I’ve learned
It is temporary. A breach of time. Self-doubt.
I’ve learned choice is what keeps me moving in and out
Wavering like a chicken with its head cut off. Sometimes
My choice to go North or go South is the wrong choice,
But a wrong choice is better than indecision. Choice is
Freedom.
I lie. I exaggerate. I talk talk talk. When no one is listening
I write. I have learned no one can give me love, no one
Can love me the way I demand that they love me. I’ve
Learned I can only talk to myself in the way I want to
Be talked to. I can only love myself, the way I want
To be loved.
I’ve learned children love more deeply,
Are more sincere. They don’t have boundaries. They
Listen to each other. Children, with no shame, cry.
Children laugh. Children dance. Children are empaths.
Children outgrow their childish selves.
I once was a child. I had childhood friends. I’ve learned
Sometimes they return. Full circle.
Sherry Quan Lee
July 2, 2025
