a road map & a full tank of gas

Having overslept from staying up too late; And having taken a couple minutes to sit and read; And having thrown down some coffee and read Williams and Hass; I pick up Brenda Hillman's "Cascadia" and read a few poems and come to "Glacial Erratics," which ends:

The word being
A box with four of its corners hidden;

Everything else is round.

And that is beautiful and mystical and challenging and mind- and aesthetic-expanding (especially when taken with the full poem in context).

Last week I came across Marvin Bell's "Thirty-Two Statements About Writing Poetry," and so I could remember a few, scratched these in a notebook:

14. Every free verse writer must re-invent free verse.

15. Prose is prose because of what it includes; Poetry is poetry because of what it leaves out.

26. A finished poem is also a draft of a later poem.

31. This Depression era jingle could be about writing poetry: "Use it up / Wear it out / Make it do / Or do without."

And sometimes when I read and sit with some of this stuff it feels like I am being given a road map and a full tank of gas and being told to "DRIVE!"

Even still, I might opt to hop on a longboard and skate the road at night with a headlamp because, well, the map still works and everyone drives, so the view and experience is different on longboard and that different perspective and voice is something I am after.

And then I think, hey man, it's just a metaphor. Get on with it!