This summer, I tried something brand new: I found a writer’s guild.
Actually, it found me. I asked an acquaintance some questions as background for an article; he discovered that I write, and asked me to join him and a friend. Three people from three countries with three wildly different genres, we sat down to share a new chapter (or a few new scenes) almost every week.
Besides enjoying the near-magical power of having someone for whom to write, I began honing some undeveloped skills. Giving face-to-face feedback. Seeing story as a whole, not a host of details to polish. Thinking in terms of character. And appreciating new styles: the ugly-beautiful of wartime historical fiction or the luxurious sheen of literary romance — with a dash of poetry on the side.
We made me laugh: the three of us, so very different. And I smiled when one fellow writer asked if I’d be writing on my flight home. There’s something about the altitude on a plane (he said) that makes him all gooey and sentimental and nostalgic
“The problem with being all gooey, sentimental, and nostalgic if you’re a girl,” I replied, “is that it’s more likely to lead to tears than undying prose.”
“G + S + N = Poetry,” he said. “Every single time.”
I was already dreading the sadness when I left, and I was determined to avoid all things G and S and N. My solution? Simple: Don’t think about it. Don’t cry. And (obviously) don’t write.
Fast-forward to my flight, which found me in my seat.
Crying.
And writing this story-poem:
The dreaded tears are dislodged at last –
But not by the impulsive apple pie.
No, that’s a loved task for family-friends in honor of the feast:
A dozen apples and half a pound of butter mixed all in a rush
While luggage lies open and unweighed.
It isn’t the transatlantic goodbye to knee-high girls
Or kind prayers in the car on the way back home.
Not resisting the lure of smooth cool bed while the whole building (a beehive of holiday joy)
Turns silent over interminable late-night hours of packing,
Or outraged back after lugging lumbering bags down the stairs, heart racing,
To an impatient curb.
It isn’t goodbye to dark and deep-loved city (kind sleep-haze blurs everything into grey),
Nor even the security search:
The new girl in training over the flotsam of my life,
Swabbing the corners of even my humblest bag,
Interrogating my innocent packet of snacks,
Acting as if there is no tomorrow. (And hey! There isn’t. I’m leaving today).
It’s not when I’m called to the counter.
Where the man says “Unfortunately –” and is interrupted,
Leaving me to wonder if a mix-up on my ticket will send me (un)packing.
It won’t, but overbooking might bump me down the totem pole and onto another flight.
Sent to wait for half an hour, I perch facing floor-to-ceiling sky.
Two tiny sparrows light near me and peck at barren steel:
Trapped and unconcerned, they know Whose eye’s on them.
The deluge is not released by my crying need to sit, as I return to wait for the impassive clerk,
Standing eye to eye with him until (at last) he says I have a place,
Just minutes before it’s time to board,
Nor arriving (anticlimax) at the gate, where everyone waits limp and bored in their seats.
No, it is just one tiny thing:
That impassive clerk spotting me in line, and beckoning me through at once.
“You’ve waited enough today,” he says.
Cloud-bursted by kindness,
The tears rain down just when they cannot be hid.
Not on the gangway or at the entrance of the plane or in my seat,
With a curious man across the aisle and passengers inching by, just inches from my face.
Antidote? This scribbled poem.
Clouds clear up, and “Whee!” a small boy cheers as we nose into the dawning sky.
I tumble into blissful sleep.
Elisabeth Adams 