Rock Bar

Last Friday, I gave my first workshop since moving back to Vermont. The Joy of Writing Conference was a small but lively affair co-hosted by the Green Mountain Writing Project and the Vermont Council of Teachers of English Language Arts. (I love this group of people, but can we talk about what a cumbersome title that is?!)

I opened my workshop with my poem, Rock Bar,  which I have probably edited now more than any other piece. Thank you to everyone who has looked at this poem over the years, especially my current adviser at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, Leslie Ullman. With your help, I dig inside myself, pull out the messiest pieces of my existence, and place them gently on paper to be examined, explored, and turned into something more.

Rock Bar
When I was young
I blazed hiking trails.  Loved working
with stone, balancing staircases
in sides of hills, and especially
prying boulders from beneath blankets
of earth to be fitted
and shaped and put into place—
a walkway. A retaining wall.
 
Stone kept rivers from eroding
the path. Offered surface to step on, a satisfying
suck and pop as mud released rock.
 
I imagined myself a dentist
of giant mouths. Wielding my rock bar
as pliers, I pulled cracked teeth
from the gummy earth, their roots bending
before letting loose whole.
 
Sometimes, I imagine a rock bar
nestled in the soil of my chest—
five feet of iron digging
through moss and leaf litter.
The fifty pounds plunge into brown
clay, searching for something
 
to excavate.
 
Sometimes, I grasp
the end of the bar and pull back.
Roll out, Resentment.
Roll out, Guilt. Sometimes
 
I nest them smoothly, one atop the other,
trying to keep the water down.