Doubt

Have you said to yourselves,
These poems are untrue. So blasé,
and false. Mediocre at best. I should
give it all up, stop pretending to write… ?

I’ve been there, too; I tell you, dear friends.
When starting again seems fraught and unsure,
my pen’s also poised above the white page
alive and throbbing, emitting its own, “I dare you”

dire warnings. Press on. Wait in that moment.
Avoid crossword puzzles, that bill to pay,
the cat to pet. Show up. Seat time. Attentive,
attuned to the hours that pass,

stay true, stand firm, offer alms to slim gods
for the words of your longing. They’ll come,
sometimes halting, obtuse, ill-met or thin.
Elusive, deceptive. Possibly all wrong.

Then you’ll look out the window to the wood shed
beyond the fallow garden, where a wren
in the rain sits under the eave, frilling her feathers;
each gray board drips below the white peak.

About the Author

Pia Borsheim has published one 30-year collection, and three chapbooks. She is currently sending out a new manuscript, of which these five poems are a part. She teaches at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC, and lives in middle Virginia. She is also a dulcimer player, a knitter, and someone who loves live music of all kinds, theater, and the joys of a writing community.To view more of their work click below.

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