Poet Jane Hirshfield said "... the feeling I have about poem-writing (is) that it is always an exploration, of discovering something I didn't already know. Who I am shifts from moment to moment, year to year. What I can perceive does as well. A new poem peers into mystery, into whatever lies just beyond the edge of knowable ground."
I bring a different poem to the writing classes each week, not only to inspire but to introduce new poets to the group members.
Night Bus to Prince George by Heather Spears
Two girls got on at Terrace children, almost, as they passed I took in, in this order, their smell their matted hair, their wretched packs and clothes. They sat behind me, talked like records running down of a boy one of them ‘almost fell for’ and one who ‘finished the section for me yesterday’ ‘Oh him—I wouldn’t—‘ suddenly, both were asleep, upright, silence from then on. And the whole time this smell, recognized instantly, not cigarettes or age or illness, just plain sour animal human dirt— follicles, cells, pores, the uninhibited skin’s ordinary youth and health. And as their voices failed in sleep I thought of the camp—hours on the slope mosquitoes, coughs, a boy calling, earth under their short nails grit in the corners of their brilliant eyes hair shoved back, narrow napes and writsts scratched from bites and thorns, then, pissing in the bush, perfect teeth tearing off bread, squak and snap of a Pepsi can, and the tent, the hard ground countdown into exhaustion asleep with their clothes on. I won’t smell this again perfume of the tree planters it’s from away back it’s real drowsing, I wish it were not wasted on me, I dream a young, blind man in my seat, abandoning his perfect senses to it all night long drinking this sweetness in. ~ from Poems, Selected and New (Wolsak and Wynn, 1998)