WATERMARK

a poet’s notebook

Established 02004

waiting

May 7, 2004

Monday Afternoon

The air is filled with cottonwood seed. The black locust blooms white. It casts its sweet orchid scent across my face. While women wait, they make up their beds in flannel and lace, count the moon, tend their gardens. They put roses in glass bowls. Yesterday, a loud storm, trees talking together in the wind.… Continue reading

Poems

poem, poetry, waiting, women

Ancestral (Artificial )Intelligence

I do not use AI to write. For me, writing is how I think, and I prefer to do it myself. If/when I post anything here that I suspect or know to be AI generated, I will tell you.

I have changed this from Artificial to Ancestral, after Abi Awomosu @ Substack. This medium was made with human history, human thought. All of it, bright and dark. It is ancestral.

Poems

Please do not assume that I am the speaker/ subject of my poems.

In these times of creative nonfiction and fictionalized memoirs, I think of the poem itself as true fiction: it is most likely not factual, but it must be true.

It is likely to be — it is best if it is — a truth I did not know before I wrote, and may not understand even then.

A poem is my way of discovering (dis-covering) what I feel; sometimes, what I think — but it is not necessarily biographical.

waiting

Monday Afternoon