Poems Come and Go

(Leaf 73) – Reflection

 

For the best part of twenty years or so, I used to travel frequently and for extended periods as part of my work. I always used to keep notebooks for jotting down ideas, quotations, lists, and various bits of info which I might happen to gather somewhere along the way, but these were always fairly large A5-sized hardback notebooks. Hence when I began to travel more, I started to keep small, slim A6-sized notebooks, the sort that were stitched, with cardboard covers, because I found these handy. They were great for slipping into a pocket when going out for a walk. They soon became filled with Eki stamps, jotted-down poem ideas, and haiku or tanka verses. But there was always a great peril in discovering you’d left your notebook behind when you’d gone out for a day, because having to memorise an idea or a stanza of verse was always a challenge. It was something I found I had to do on more than one occasion though, but sometimes these are good ways of testing whether a poem actually works or is worth remembering and writing down later. Nowadays, of course, I tend to have a mobile phone in my pocket on which I can jot down a note or two if needed. But even still, I do like to leave my phone at home sometimes when I go out – something which might be an unthinkable nightmare for some people! But I do find I hanker for those days long since gone when life was smart-less and undigitized. And I do still like to jot down and work out my poems on paper, and probably always will. Leopards don’t change their spots.

 

 

Travelling –

poems come and go,

before I can write them down.

Photograph by Tim Chamberlain