Getting the Images Down on Paper

Composition notebooks are on sale in September and I buy a stack of them in order to have plenty of portable papers—fresh lines to write upon. Problem is I also keep a small literary-given in my purse and keep dreams written and drawn upon, mixed with random thoughts and loose associations scrawled, one eye open, in the black, leather bound journals with glued spines.

Always, if I’m able, keep myself in fresh pens, slick, precise, V5’s, rolling ball, extra fine. A pack of two costs $7.35 at the local Fred Meyer. Once in a blue moon, the reds or blues go 25% off and so too, I employ these in taking bits from the world in symbol form on blue-ruled lines.

In my blue, puff-coat, the one I should just toss, the one I wear to smoke under the bamboo, or to the lake when we’re fishing because I don’t mind wiping worm guts or the glowing, green glitter of power bait on its sleeves, is right now stuffed with random receipts and auto repair notes with my observations, beginnings of poems written as I so intently observe the two men, four little boys one dock over. Despite all of those journals and notebooks I’ve gathered, I once again find my mind wandering, pen moving with only random scraps pulled from the glovebox to write upon.