I have a tiny Moleskine pad. It is the smallest I have. It is bright orange and has 123 lined pages. The last two pages are now redundant because I used them to write down all the page number references corresponding to important passages found in Tim Lilburn’s book, Living In The World As If It Were Home.
I needed to write these page numbers down because I was gifting this book to Dr Martin Shaw. I had ordered him a new one, as a gift, but it hadn’t arrived on time, so I decided to give him my copy instead. On my copy, however, I had placed sticky markers in and I didn’t want to lose all these page markings because they were the places I had found a deep resonance with Lilburn’s thoughts, but as I sat on the train heading to London that day, I only had my bright orange Moleskine pad to write them down.
I mention all of this because this pad was and is special to me. It has a title too:
All Those Thin Mournings
This pad is where I have been writing down all my poems, or at least the ones I have never published anywhere. I guess you would call it a collection, my first.
The title is important, and I will say more about it at some point, though it probably speaks for itself.
As an aside, I started writing poetry, rather than simply reading and sharing other people’s a few years ago, after I received a cease and desist notice from the literary estate of a famous poet. I could have reacted in several ways to that letter, but I saw it in the best possible light, a call to my own poetic adventure, and much of the personal, vulnerable fruits of that adventure are contained in this bright orange pad.
That’s a long way to say that I think I have neared the point where I can collect all these poems up and share them with the world. I have no grand expectations around this, other than knowing at this point they are better off out there than in here.
To that end, I am sharing one poem now titled “You Never Really Know Why”, it’s not really about Blackbirds, but I’ll leave the images to speak to you in their own ways.
You Never Really Know Why (2/7/25)
You never really know why that
Blackbird chose this garden, or
Why that man, who gathers flint
At first light, walks with a
Neolithic limp.
Or why, on this thin morning,
The bells, which have rung in a
Thousand calm dawnings
Sound, today, like they’re being sung by
A choir that resides in the deepest
Recesses of your soul.
You never really know,
Still, it will never stop you
From trying to find out why.
Thanks for reading.
Will
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