when poetry began 

to make me sad —

I stopped writing it

I stopped reading it

and instead I began to paint and

take photographs of places and stuff

I loved a lot

Occasionally I do write poems 

snowcapped

hills and green trees

and the unwinding

rivers — what is dense and dark

leads me in

what I know about becoming calm

paint —- the colors across the canvas

are language — the fragments of me

“The Great Gatsby” still has the power 

to break my heart and make me wish

for a different ending to that story