#14 The Poem

    There was a spot where the water was shallow and the current was low. It was the place people went on hot days when fans and opening the windows was not enough. It was a little paradise with the shade of the trees and the babbling of the water. Some of the children swam naked while others went in fully clothed. It was a place where your last name and the state of your house didn’t matter. Everyone was hot so everyone went to the river. 

I had nestled onto a rock with the tree branches hovering overhead, giving me plenty of shade. My notebook was balanced on my knee. I had a few lines of a poem jotted down in it, but I was searching for the right word to end a line. I was trying to capture that feeling of togetherness.

“You are an artist.” 

A man was crouched on the rock close by. His head was tilted sideways like a curious bird. His features were thinner than all the people around me, foreign.

“I write poems.”

“Like music.” His eyes brightened at the idea, his head popping up making him look more like a bird.

“I’ve never put them to music, but I suppose they would be songs.”

“Would you share one with me?”

I didn’t share my poems. There were a few that I shared with family and some friends, but those had been the polished ones that I thought shined the most. They were not in this notebook and I wasn’t sure I wanted to share with a complete stranger.

“I don’t have any poems that are ready to share.” 

He frowned. “I will wait then.” He sat down on the rock, his legs sprawled in front of him. He would be very tall standing up. There was something odd about his clothes. They seemed to have a shimmer to them.

There were a few minutes where he was watching everything on the river and I couldn't make myself think of writing. He was distracting, though he did nothing to be distracting. There was something about him that made him feel like a puzzle that needed to be solved. I couldn’t exactly ask him to leave. There was another person sitting on the grass on my other side that was just as close. I stared at my paper then stared at the people and eventually thoughts of my poem overtook thoughts of the stranger.

I gnawed on the end of my pencil, the word to finish a line still eluding me. I had tried out many words and was debating if I could just make up a completely new word. I turned to the man.

“What is a word that talks about things working out perfectly? Like the world is aligning?”

The man’s eyes furrowed in thought and for a second I wished I was a good enough painter to capture that face. How does a person look elegant while frowning?

“Kismet.” He said then looked at me. “Does this serve your purpose?”

I mouthed the word, chewing it over and read the line with it in the poem.

“I think that works.” I scratched the word down.

“Is your art finished now?” He was leaning close.

“No, not yet.” I leaned away.

The man pouted and I bit back a laugh. Now he looked like a puppy. It was odd to see such a childish expression on a man his age, though he couldn’t be much into his twenties. He laid back on the rock and closed his eyes.

I had added a few more lines to my poem by the time the river began to clear and people went home for supper, but I still hadn’t finished it. 

“I have to go home now.” 

The man sat up. “Did you finish your poem?”

“No, it still needs work.”

“Then I will wait.” 

He laid back down on the ground. I stood and brushed off my clothes. I looked at the man with his eyes closed. I was struck with the need to paint him again. There was something about his features that made me want to capture all of their detail. 

He did not get up as I walked away and I wondered if he would truly stay right there until I returned.

The next morning I packed up my painting kit and my lunch and headed to the river. It hadn’t become crowded yet, but there were some children playing close by. I arranged my watercolors and set up the box on my lap as an easel. I did a small warm up painting of the river focusing more on shapes than color. I had seen an artist once in a book that painted everything in the idea of a thing rather than how it truly looked. You knew it was a chair in the painting, but it was not a perfect copy. This reminded me of that.

“Artist. Has your poem been finished?” The man from the day before was making his way to the bank. 

“Not yet.”

“Will you finish it today?”

“I decided to paint today.”

“I thought that you wrote poems.”

“I paint as well.”

He seemed amazed at the idea. He sat down beside me and looked at the warm up I had done. He was even more delighted when he pinpointed what part of the river I had painted. He sat down beside me and watched the people, and I took out my pencil and tried to sketch his face. I was decent at drawing people, but I knew that there were more people that were better than I was. 

Rough sketches covered my paper, and eraser shavings littered the rock from the many lines I erased trying to copy his features exactly. The lines never seemed to be right. Everytime I looked at his face I would be convinced he looked a certain way. I drew the lines and looked back up and found that they were wrong. I was certain he had oddly pointed ears when I looked at him, but when I looked away I was no longer sure.

I stopped when my stomach reminded me that I needed to eat. I pulled out my lunch and offered some to the man, but he refused it. I chewed and thought. I wrote a few lines of a poem on the edge of my paper. 

By the end of the day I hadn’t drawn a single line that I was satisfied with. I left the river with the man still laying on the rock.

It rained the next day and the next. I was anxious to get back to the river. I always made the best art when I was at the river, unless I was trying to draw a man with uncapturable features.

When the sun shone bright the next morning I packed up my notebook and my painting supplies, wanting to have both options, and marched to the river. The water was higher and rushed faster. People would not be swimming for a few days. I wouldn’t be able to finish my poem for a while, my inspiration warned away by the fast current, but being here was enough to create something.

I drew a few sketches of the river. Wrote a short poem. I kept glancing around, looking for the man, but stayed alone the whole day. All of what I created seemed shallow and juvenile.

I packed up and went home early.

The man did not come the next day or the next. I began to worry that something might have happened to him. Then I heard him yelling “Artist,” and smiled as he climbed up onto the rock.

“Have you finished the poem?”

“Not yet, but I’ve done a few paintings.” 

I showed them to the man. He liked to point out where they were on the water, but he seemed the most surprised by the things that I pulled from my head, as if that was something I shouldn’t be able to do. I tried to pass over my drawings of him quickly, hoping he wouldn’t notice he was the subject, but he placed his hand on top of them before I could shuffle them behind.

“Is this me?” His tone was more reverent than the drawings deserved.

“I could never get the lines quite right. They all came out too sharp. Even your ears look pointed.” He was not very aware of personal space.

“You did better than I would expect actually.”

He stroked his hands over the drawing. His admiring grew to an awkward length. I cleared my throat pointedly but he didn’t move. I picked up the paper and handed it to him.

“For me?”

“You can look at it.”

He sat back, legs crossed. He sat up straight and attentive to the paper. I studied him for a few seconds then set to work on my poem, his obvious fascination with my art giving me motivation.

He didn’t stop gazing at my drawings and I kept looking around at all the people, searching for the right ideas and words that captured the feeling of being by the river with the whole town. I sifted through the sounds and the sights. I dug into how they made me feel. They needed to be right. Not everything here created the feeling I needed.

I worked into the afternoon and well past the time that families went home for supper. The sky was fading by the time I rearranged and rewrote the words in my poem in a way that I was satisfied. 

“I’m finished.”

The man looked up at me for the first time since I gave him my drawings. He set the paper down gently and moved closer, looking over the words. 

“Will you read it?”

I chewed on my lip for a second then read out the words. It felt like music on my tongue and heart swelled as I read. I felt powerful speaking them outloud.

He sighed when I finished. “May I have it?” He pointed to the page.

I hesitated. I had never given people copies of my writing before. No one had ever asked. I was possessive of my work. 

“Let me copy it for you.” I wrote it out as neatly as I could on a different page. He watched me with interest, childish and excited. I finished and carefully tore out the page for him. He took it like it would fly away, gently and slowly. 

“I will cherish this, artist.” He stood and did not take his eyes from the paper as he walked away. I collected the drawings from where he had left them and glanced his way as he went into the trees, his eyes still on the poem.

I packed my things and headed home. I curled up on my bed and pulled out my notebook wanting to read my poem again, wanting to taste its perfection again. I turned through the pages, but couldn’t find it. I turned through the pages again and it still wasn’t there. Panic settled in and I thought I might have torn out both pages, but when I looked there was only one torn edge. 

I chewed on my lip in worry and it took me quite a few minutes to calm down and think logically. I would just talk to the man the next day and ask him to return it long enough for me to copy it again. I felt better after that.

The next morning I woke up eager and made it to the river quickly. I waited on my rock, but the man did not come. The next day he did not return and I walked along the river to see if he found a different spot but he was not there. He wasn’t there the next day or the next and when I asked other people about him they did not know who I was talking about even when I showed them my drawings.

I had resigned myself to knowing that I would never see him again. I sat down and opened my notebook. I had read it enough. I could rewrite it. I wrote words, remembered kismet, but it was all wrong. I frowned at every line. I knew that I had some of the lines memorized, but as soon as they felt close they drifted away again. They were in my head, but I couldn’t translate them, like they were in a different language.

I laid back on the rock. It felt like there was a little empty pocket in my mind where the poem had been. As if he had stolen the idea of the poem as well as the poem itself. It was strange to lose an idea. I couldn’t even quite grasp what the poem had been about, but the worst of it was that I knew that it had been good and now it was lost.

I spent my days by the river, but in none of those days did I see the man who had stolen my poem. It took me weeks to get back to creating things that I found satisfying. The air became colder and swimming at the river became scarcer. Somedays I wondered if I had dreamt the poem and the man. The drawings weren’t proof enough that he was real.

When it was too cold for anyone to swim in the river I decided that it didn’t matter. The memory of creating something lovely was now satisfying enough. I would make more art that I would enjoy just as much. I stood up with my notebook tucked in my hand.

I looked along the river, a last glance to see if the world wished to be ironic now that I had decided to move on, but the river banks remained empty.