Notebook
It holds a bucket list of poems
that I’ve mostly given up on
and handwritten directions
to places I can’t pronounce
Its empty pages are haunted
with a family of unborn chances
for people I’ve never met
who only want to look at the pictures
I don’t drive far from home
and can barely read my own writing
but I miss the inspiration
closed between the pages
of bright futures and good graces
Where once in a lifetime love spent
is stamped like a passport in faded print
is lost between the landmarks
and forgotten signs of time
where every unearthed revelation
is a one-of-a-kind
_____________Colleen Redman / Poets United / Imaginary Garden with Real Toads
January 6th, 2019 10:26 am
Notebooks can certainly be disturbing places to visit. I have some just like the one you describe in this poem. At least you wrote a poem about the empty pages and barely legible scrawls, so all is not lost!
January 6th, 2019 12:32 pm
I have never been a good notebook person… all my notes are on my Google drive… so I’m saved the scribbles but on the other hand it’s not easy even if I can see the words to get back that emotion…
January 6th, 2019 12:59 pm
I envy poets who walk around with fat notebooks brimming with writing and pictures….such a wealth of material. I miss even writing longhand, since I have transferred to writing on computer. There seemed more of a brain-arm connection, and a nicer flow to my words when I wrote by hand. I really enjoyed this poem.
January 6th, 2019 3:25 pm
Empty pages — unborn chances — waiting to be filled and taken? who knows what could result!
January 6th, 2019 3:34 pm
I have a thing for note books and your poem speaks to me with a familiar voice, Colleen! I particularly like:
‘Its empty pages are haunted
with a family of unborn chances’.
I too can barely read my own writing!
January 6th, 2019 5:47 pm
It’s easy to disappear into old notebooks 🙂
January 6th, 2019 11:04 pm
I love my notebooks and I see that you do too–unborn chances –your imagery is woonderful
January 7th, 2019 12:41 am
handwritten directions
to places I can’t pronounce… I so love that!!! What a treasure!
January 7th, 2019 1:28 am
Ah, such repositories for bits of the self, old notebooks. I seldom revisit mine, yet cannot bear to let them go.
January 7th, 2019 11:04 am
Oh gosh this is beyond beautiful! ❤ Especially love the last stanza ???
January 7th, 2019 4:35 pm
I have so many notebooks and many are empty, begging me to discover the words hidden in their pages. I found one yesterday I didn’t even remember buying…and immediately began to wonder what was ‘in’ it. Thanks for sharing!
January 8th, 2019 10:57 am
One came popping out from under the seat of the Tacoma last week with only one smallish (not-so-badly-written) piece in it, randomly placed on a middle-y page THAT I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO RECOLLECTION OF WRITING!
January 8th, 2019 11:09 am
“Where once in a lifetime love spent
is stamped like a passport in faded print
is lost between the landmarks”
What a beautiful way of putting the idea across! A notebook is quite a treasure trove of all of this and more. Very well penned. 🙂
January 8th, 2019 11:41 am
Going through notebooks is like an archaeological/autobiographical dig!
January 8th, 2019 11:51 am
What a lovely gift you have given yourself, a treasure.
January 8th, 2019 6:02 pm
What a beauty this poem is…especially the last stanza! I also have stacks of notebooks with disjointed thoughts or partial poems, so I found this especially touching. Sometimes they find their rightful place in a new poem, as if they had been waiting all their lives just to see the light at the right moment…like many of us.
January 8th, 2019 6:58 pm
The past 2 years, I’ve been throwing out notebooks of my youth. But not before I skimmed through them and cracked up at my angst.
January 9th, 2019 2:49 pm
Nice to hear that you writer has saved sooo much, Cokeen. I save thoughts on a private blog, these three public blogs, a few not private but not very well linked, and on the “notes” place on my iPad. Most of my pictures are private on my computer or on electronic cards or those before digital are in note books or in boxes. We lost all photos before July 1979 when we had three feet of flood water in our home for several days.
BTW, I believe I am older than your writer
..
January 9th, 2019 3:20 pm
They’re all old notebooks that hold words like pressed flowers, done and undone. I use my blog as a journal now too, since 2005.
January 9th, 2019 3:23 pm
Loved your poem…
January 9th, 2019 4:36 pm
the promise, the tears, the salt-stained pages of wet boots carrying winter’s imprints; the songs of children’s laughter, the cries of bright delight in summer’s pressed flowers ….
images scribbled in fleeting haste, word strings like a treasured pearl necklace, or the elusive fish nibbling on a pond’s surface, refusing the hook of the hand or mind’s eye ….
notebooks are charms and dragons – and we are them, as much as they are us, like our skin
wonderful poem – and sorry I’m late to visit, but I just had to walk in and say how lovely this poem, these thoughts 🙂
January 9th, 2019 4:40 pm
Yes, Pat, those notebooks have so much more character and charm than online journals, I do believe. What a loss. I still have notebooks but they are only haphazard workbooks and not the same.
January 14th, 2019 2:18 pm
i had to read this when i saw the couple of lines in your 13.. and as always, your writing astounds me.. that is my someday goal, to write so someone somewhere is astounded..
and i do love having a notebook with me, just in case and while i use my laptop/phone often, my notebook gets some use too..