In the Wild Light by Jeff Zentner

Author:Jeff Zentner [Zentner, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2021-08-10T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

I’ve saved Dr. Adkins’s homework for last because I know it’ll be the toughest.

I open the Mary Oliver book and skim as my mind wanders. I think about what Papaw’s funeral will be like. I wonder if his old friends will show up for him. I wonder—

I force myself back to the page. I promised Dr. Adkins I’d give this my best. I start reading again. Really reading. Letting myself taste the words, each one melting on my tongue.

Something happens. A slow daybreak inside me, the first rays of a new sun peeking over the gray horizon. I don’t always understand what I’m reading. Poets use language in ways I’ve never considered, to describe things I thought defied description.

Dr. Adkins picked poets who write about the world. About rivers and fireflies and formations of geese and deer and rain and wind. Things I love.

By the time I’m done reading at least one poem out of each book (usually more), I’m experiencing a deep calm, like I feel after being on a river, under the sun, in the wind, feeling the spray off my paddle. For those brief moments strolling through the forest of words, everything had disappeared. Papaw wasn’t dying while I was far from him at a place where I didn’t belong, always on the precipice of disappointing him. I had stolen moments of joy from a hungry world that devours them and protected them for a while in cupped hands.

I sit with the feeling for as long as I can before it fades and loses definition, like a cloud formation.

Then I remember the second part of my assignment. To write a poem. This part makes me more apprehensive. I open my notebook to a blank page. Something about using a pen and paper feels more right. I stare at the white wilderness in front of me. It seems to grow with every second. I sit for almost an hour. I’ll write a line. Then I’ll think it sounds dumb or trite, and I’ll scratch it out and start over. Repeat. Repeat. I get distracted by the sound coming from Tripp’s headphones across from me.

Why can’t writing be like mowing lawns or chopping wood? You put your back into it; you get sweaty; you get the job done.

Well. She told me poetry doesn’t need to be elaborate. I write,

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