I began working on this poem about a year ago (December 17th, it says on my Notes app). It came barreling towards me so fast I had to grab it by the shirtsleeves so it couldn’t leave me before I had to chance to meet it.
I couldn’t finish it at the time. Somehow I knew there was more to be said, but it felt like a poem that was so explicitly December it couldn’t have been made anywhere else.
So for twelve months it simmered — throughout romantic January and hectic February, and the Spring Summer Fall of my life this year. And now, December again. It feels crazy to be here, on another revolution of the planet around the sun. Sometimes I feel like a part of me will forever exist in the last Prussian blue months of 2020 and the thrumming new first half of 2021—always sitting at the exhilarating edge of uncertainty of that specific time. A thrilling and terrifying period that I can’t believe is over—or at least, has morphed into something else.
As a nod to this poem’s inception I took a walk through the same park I first glimpsed this poem. Racing towards me, in the corner of my eye. I wondered if it would meet me there. I wondered if it would pause, mid-bounce, to remember the anniversary of our collision, and that it hadn’t been born just yet.
When I arrived at the park on that cool night, it was completely empty. I strolled through it slowly. The pavement was still wet from the rain. It felt like being at the mall after closing time, like a Disneyland-after-hours excursion. Everything was quiet, and I couldn’t believe I was all alone here. No people, but also, no poem. My mind was as still as the air.
I realized that the magic of being all alone in this empty park at night was exactly what I had come to meet. When that poem came to me, it was just the one time. But it gave me everything I needed.
I keep thinking of this line I heard from somewhere—about putting your hands into the river and trying to catch water. To me, that’s what writing (and making art of all kinds) feels like. And poems or songs almost always feel like rapids. It might need a little refining still, but I think, a year later, this poem has pretty much always been done—all I needed to do was shift around some parts. The distance of time and perspective allowed me to do that. So maybe, when the poem came—already so whole it was brimming to the surface—it was really just waiting for me.
December Poem
Open all hours of the day is a street on the left where we used to meet I keep thinking I’ll find you there but there is space for forgetting The delirium of every Friday night I’m doing cartwheels in your honor if I start my slow walk to the ends of the earth will you meet me there? Like an angel in all-white denim I carried flowers for you in the garden and your tears fell to pearls at my feet All over here people are falling in love as they skit-skittle-skat across the wet grass pavement and run past the limits of where they ought and girls in blue blouses glissade like swans while boys ride with gleaming shoulders down the nighttime lightshine street Rashes crawl up your neck like roses on a bush and oh! It feels so good to itch and I can’t help but fall in love with everybody I meet
Voice Note #27 - December Poem