Ideas run around my feet like bad little children just wanting to be picked up and loved. I’m usually too busy to take care of them and so they starve into thin shadows that blow away into someone else’s poems. It’s a problem I’ve learned to live with, reading all my best thoughts in other peoples really great poems. No, I don't think they're stealing anything. I really think these great ideas and beautiful words and sounds toodle around the countryside looking for a home, any home. I'm sort of pleased to see my own letters (A-Z) used in Billy Collins poems, for example. I get them back and am happy to use them, second-hand. Some say that Shakespeare used them in his day, which means, I guess, that I'm using Shakespeare's letters and words and ideas. Who knew?
On forgetting the poem.
I was driving and didn’t write it down.
It was so beautiful I wanted to cry
and now I don’t remember why.
We were talking and the look in your eyes made me think:
“Oh!”
But I remember only the glimpse and not the glory.
The westering sun smacked my face
with a message that might change the world
but I was far from home and my pen was dry.
I was bound to forget but I don’t know why.
Oh lord. I did this recently. There was an episode of Mad Men dedicated to the frustration of losing a great idea. I have to believe it will come back (or it wasn't that good, possibly!). :)
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