In case I forget

I hold the pencil,

I choose the colors,

I decide the shape upon shape,

it is I who picks how hard to press.

I wait until the pencil tip is too dull for drawing,

then my hands are the ones that sharpen it.

I determine what gets posted,

my fingers clicked on this picture to upload.

My friend writes poems about clouds

shaped like aramaic scrolls

and veins of streetlights seen from a plane.

Currents under frozen rivers.

I am not as smart as she;

I have a much more direct metaphor.

This mandala did not exist until I conceived it,

or, more realistically, until I let it come from me.

I did not think that I was going to draw

concentric lopsided quadrilaterals.

But I did have to get the sketchbook,

I had to find an open page,

I had to be willing to select the first prismacolor,

and touch it to the page.

I had to figure out what to do next,

then next, then next. I had to cock my head,

and determine the subsequent step when none was obvious.

I did not know that it would turn out

beautifully, and so would this picture:

the one that reminds me of the work.

Every day is like this:

the black page, the empty white rim,

the medium, the intention, the acts

of imagination, formation, inauguration.

It is the same, filling the circle

of a page or the curve of time.

In case I forget, life is not happening to me,

I am happening to life.