It’s a good thing I practiced in the dark.

~ John Prine

Wisely, fortunately, I go out early in front of the wind. Into the rain sheeting the river. Through the moistly greening meadow and across the smokey river wetlands where spring is in bud. Later, it comes, howling and knocking and forcing its way around the woods, across the yard, raking the river into rough. Will trees topple, what will break? I keep working. I am at my desk in the wind roar, remembering the peace of the slanting rain and Charlie soaked beside me. In the muck I found a golf ball, neon yellow, advising me to practice. John Prine, in an interview with Terry Gross, Fresh Air, is talking about his fear that he would lose his sight some day and so he practiced fingerpicking his guitar in a dark closet. Writing a poem is like that, I think: not being able to see, but wanting to get the words down in the dark. Tonight was Monday night poetry workshop. I felt, as I shared one of my letter palimpsest found poems as if I’d written it in the dark and my fellow poets were reading it to me in the light. Now the wind has stopped, we never lost our lights and no trees fell on the house, and the amazing thing, we watched all day, Frank’s arch at the entrance to the unplanted garden in its new place. Would it hold up? The gargantuan pines with their green needled branches swayed crazily. But the arch held. It’s holding still.