I found Lucille Clifton’s poem today while browsing on SubStack, and looking for inspiration, I wrote this poem after her wonderful work.

I have no right to do this, save any poet’s right to stress my poetry mind with weight and substance in an attempt to capture something from another poet’s lead.

It’s a process that is used in many, many classrooms, especially with William Carlos Williams’ poem, “The Red Wheelbarrow“. I remember using his poem to craft one of my early poems as well, a poem that now is lost as much as any workout is lost except to the memory of the exercise.

Working out is also the theme of my poem here, using that idea as a way to comment about the reality of getting old.

Lucille Clifton’s poem likewise is a way to comment on this, though her poem is more about the need to let go of the promises we made to ourselves years ago.

Exercise, for me, is also a promise, a commitment to pushing myself physically in hopes that I can be in better shape, whatever that hopeful shape is to me at that time.

The problem with such goals has always been their reevaluation in the light of current circumstances. Sure, I’d like to be able to run thirteen miles at a time, but with this or that injury or illness, ten is a better goal.

But what of that original desire? That’s a promise I need to let go with the concurrent need to forgive myself for giving it up. And in this specific way, this poem pays tribute to Clifton’s poem as well.

Some notes on craft. I have become enamored of the Google search “synonyms for …”. Occasionally this is for a similar word that fits better, but here, and more often, it is for a more precise term that enhances the effect of the poem.

For instance here, the second to last line originally read “strong knees and forgiving miles”, which is the essential meaning here, but the word “sturdy” is more specific than “strong” implying a knee that holds up under pressure, not just a powerful knee. “Clement” is also more precise, suggesting that the knee is going to give me mercy, not just forgiveness.

And finally, I love the phrase, “on the cadge for” which essentially means I’m looking to get something for nothing but also that this is an imposition on someone, or in this case, on something.

The picture here took some getting. It is a shot of a flashlight beam in the woods during a light drizzle while walking my dogs. It was such a wondrous sight to see that after I took the dogs in I ran back out with the flashlight and took several shots in hopes I could capture the feeling of the moment. As is, it looks to me like a cloud chamber now with the trails of radioactive particles made visible. Or the background chaos of our world revealed.