Shorthand for Nothing

So, I was unpacking earlier and I found a little scrap of paper that I’d seen before but never paid attention to. It’s the first draft of the poem that I like enough to show people even now. Most of my poems, I start to dislike not long after writing them. This one is different. Here is the current/final draft:

Did your eyes sparkle like champagne
when you returned the world to Atlas?
No rocketing corks or explosive fizz
just a quiet effervescence that screamed
“I’m not lonely anymore!” and you weren’t–
lonely, that is,
and with no help but the world.
And when you became what you pretended to be,
did you lift a glass to the horizon?

Did you smile like it’s a crime,
or maybe like a secret between you and me
though we haven’t shared secrets for years?
Did you smile, afraid to smile,
frightened to be unafraid?

Remember when I sang your fears to sleep?
I never expected them to leave.
Did you think of me when they fled?
Or did you drink my memory away?
I know the champagne
is stronger than you’re used to.

It was something in your eyes,
I think,
and I knew you weren’t who you were.
And neither am I–
who I was, I mean,
and so, like strangers,
we pass in the street with a smile and a “What if?”
but we’re not like strangers at all.

The first draft reads as follows:

Did your eyes sparkle like champagne?
No rocketing corks or explosive fizz,
but a quiet effervescence that screams
“I’m not lonely anymore!” and you weren’t–
lonely, I mean, and on your very own,
no help but the world.

Or did you sigh and smile, content,
as you returned the world to Atlas?
And you did grow weary
and made him take it back–
and he was willing to bear it all for you.
Yours was no Herculean task.

I was expecting something I didn’t know I knew:
It was your eyes
(and your smile and your posture and your body language).
They made strangers say you were
the loneliest girl they’d ever seen.
I never understood until I saw
your eyes sparkling like champagne
or maybe I saw your contended smile
as you saw someone else
carry the world.

The rest of the post is concealed behind the jump, in the event you don’t want to read me talking about the “technical” details here. (more…)

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One Sunday morning at the Hurricane Cafe in Seattle, I left a poem on the napkin for the waitress. It’s one of the notions I have because I’m a writer and a dabbler in poetry–that I like the idea of leaving something on a napkin. Obviously I tip, also, but I entertain the hopes that getting a poem on a napkin would brighten someone’s day.

Unfortunately, I’m not at all good at coming up with poetry on the spot. I don’t want to leave something too dark. But dark is what I’m best at. It’s hard to immediately produce something cheerful, or even wistful, nostalgic, or thoughtful that I feel would make a good gift.

Ultimately I end up leaving a few lines from a song scribbled on a napkin. I need to work on the poetry thing.

The poem I left, by the way, that Sunday I mentioned, went something like this:

‘She smells like quiet drives in the rain. / The weather is cold and unpleasant / but the car is warm / and the windshield wipers freshly changed / (And from the car it’s easy to imagine: / the rain is clean and renewing) // And despite the clouds blocking the sun / it’s bright out / and the colors are clearer / than the sunniest of days. / Such a day could not be called dreary.’

I obviously don’t have the original draft, but I think I prefer it that way.

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