. . . finding a safety pin for a lady’s knickers
that’s fallen down.
—Douglas Millin (University College, Oxford)
Being nowhere else,
but with you I look
back upon locked in,
doors closed as in
a monastery.
Hallowed time because
of the air we breathe—
what I’ve longed for,
more than a fantasy
I now tell you about.
Oh, pain modesty
I expected to hear about,
nerve-endings what I
acknowledge to myself
being with you only.
Staid and proper
virtues I learn to live by,
contemplating love again
in another time or place
I tell you about.
What keeps passing between us
until the next embarrassing
moment occurs pins and
needles never far away—
I assure you once more.
What you’ve come to expect
in more genteel ways valour
with words sung now more
fully expressed I indeed
want you to know.
Questions and Answers
As a published writer, what are your tips or words of motivation for the aspiring poet?
Write every day and re-write constantly, and focus on images. Avoid generalized writing. As Coleridge said, fiction writers put words in the right place, but poets put the right words in the right places. “Metaphor, metaphor,” I cry.
What poetic techniques did you use in this poem? How much attention do you pay to form and metre?
Each poem determines its own specific form and metre in usage. With this poem and the many drafts I did, I kept playing with form and style and rhythm, as well as with inflection tied to lineation—until the poem began taking its own organic structure giving “life” to the experience behind poem—as I imagined it.