I can't seem to post an original poem without some little bit of commentary. I don't know if this is because I am tacitly apologizing for the poor quality of the poem as a means of protecting my ego (the truth is, I like this one a really lot), or if I'm deluding myself into thinking I'm on an episode of VH-1 Storytellers, the kind of music programming that network did before they started airing "The Flavor of Love." But who can blame them; after all, isn't Flavor-Flav every woman's dream? Isn't he the one for whom the saying, "Woman want him, and men want to be him" was invented?

But I digress. The intro distracts me from the seriousness of the poem.

So anyway, I put this poem in my notebook in the summer of 2001 during a week-long writing institute facilitated by Linda Miller, who is an absolutely fabulous facilitator of writing retreats and week-long writing institutes. She has the certain kind of "it" that can move a writer into places he or she might not think (or want) to go. This poem came from a series of prompts that included a listing of natural phenomena or geographic features. Every experience we have has its own geography, and somehow, Linda's prompting led me to a geyser, my only experience of which is video footage of Old Faithful. Some attention to the details of the video that rolls through my brain took me to that "ambivalent resistance" I mention in the poem. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that a note from my good pal Mary Smith validated something to me about either the poem or myself. I don't know why it's taken me more than five years to transcribe the poem from my notebook to the computer.

Thanks for putting up with my long-windedness.

Old Faithful

Whenever people visit –
family, friends, students –
you know they want the show.

So they surround me –
the iron railings keep them a safe distance –
and they urge, sometimes silently

Be funny
Be clever
Be quick

till my ambivalent resistance melts. Then,
from a place deep in my belly,
beneath the terrain that invites their treading,

I burst skyward, a glorious ephemeral spectacle
they can admire and discuss
as they leave, drizzled by my mist.

My audience satisfied,
I return to my subterranean comfort,
and you never see me where I most exist.