By Nick Flynn
Years later I'm standing before a roomful of young writers in
a high school in Texas. I've asked them to locate an image
in a poem we’d just read — their heads at this moment
are bowed to the page. After some back & forth about the
grass & a styrofoam cup, a girl raises her hand & asks,
Does it matter? I smile — it is as if the universe balanced
on those three words & we've landed in the unanswerable. I
have to admit that no, it doesn't, not really, matter, if rain
is an image or rain is an idea or rain is a sound in our heads.
But, I whisper, leaning in close, to get through the next
forty-seven minutes we might have to pretend it does.
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My week is on a repeat cycle of complaining about my back, going to take a walk somewhere scenic to make my back feel better and enjoy the spring, more complaining about my back, and more walking in the neighborhood to make my back feel better and see flowers and bunnies. Today the walk was at Carderock, mostly on the canal side rather than climbing over the rocks by the river, where we saw frogs, turtles, ducks, and -- far down the hillside -- bluebells:
Maddy had a friend over after work and went out to dinner with him; the rest of us, except the cats, had pizza and watched Designated Survivor, starting by catching up from last week before the new one came on (I like the wannabe La Femme Nikita parts a lot better than the wannabe West Wing parts). In good news, the Capitals, Wizards, Nationals, and Orioles all won, so no one has broken local hearts yet, not even in the playoffs!
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