I’m still celebrating National Poetry Month by reprinting a few of my published poems here. It’s a great way for me to share more of my work for free, and who doesn’t need new poems in their life?
“Something in the Attic” placed first in the 2016 Frederick J. McCarthy Memorial Award sponsored by the Poetry Society of Texas, and published in the subsequent prize anthology A Book of the Year. It’s a fun one for me. 🙂 I hope you like it!
Something in the Attic
There’s an idea nestling in the back of my mind
squirreling away materials
like a rodent in the attic –
I get only hints that it’s there:
scurrying, a vague woodsy smell.
At times, I find the mystery distracting
so I climb the ladder
and peek my head up, looking around,
but the idea has gone,
tucked tail and dived into hiding,
and the only proof I see that it was there at all
are teeth-mark nibbles on the beams, and a feeling
of recent vacancy, like a cool dent in a bed
once warmed.
What is it? I’ll find out soon enough.
For now I descend the ladder
and tuck the door up tight, listening.
But it’s only when I’ve returned to normal things
that the sound comes again,
bustling, hurrying, scurrying work
piled by small paws in a shadowed corner
to serve some later purpose,
for it is only in the dark
that animals make meaning;
it is only in the dark that new ideas thrive.
© Annie Neugebauer, 2016
Any other creatives identify with this one? I’m nearing the end of the process with the WIPbeast and have a little something rustling in the attic now…
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