"Touching Bottom"
Sometimes the best advice comes randomly.
"Please hold through the silence," the machine voice said,
the best advice I've ever come across
for weathering writer's block. At the restaurant,
my friend tasted her buffalo steak and said,
"It's not anything like they say it is,"
which words should be engraved upon my heart
and piped into my memory each time
that I assume the saying of the world
is anything at all like living in it.
And yet, I love how words can sound the world,
how they can take you deep inside your life:
you say something simple, and suddenly,
that plank in reason breaks and down you drop--
into a liberating train of thought.
You're drinking coffee, talking to a friend,
and poetry unravels from her mouth,
an Ariadne string that leads you out
of that dark labyrinth where a minotaur
of your own making has held you in thrall.
"Keep your end level," my husband advised
as we built shelves, and as the high-strung one,
I took his words to heart. "Take in my give,"
my mother used to say as we made beds,
which words taught me how to conduct myself
in future bedrooms with the men I loved.
My self-made father once said, "We should live
like poor men with money." When I thanked him,
he asked, "For what?" I said, "Because I just
touched bottom when you said that."
