By Chris Fettes
There are poems I intend to write
That land on the purgatorial backburner
Never to be revisited
Because the poem was conceived
In a distinct and fleeting moment, and
The moment passed, its magic
Became but a distant glimmer:
The mother who chose
Not to spank her young son
In the doctor’s waiting room
When he broke her rules,
But instead calmed him
And said she would not hurt him
Then asked if he understood what he did wrong,
In the protection of being told
He would not be punished.
I was in awe of the moment,
The moment was the poem
And I did not capture it
In the crystalline clarity
With which the interaction occurred,
But I thought of it again and again.
Here lies an observation, rudely captured,
After the moment lost its shine
In the recesses of my memory
And a long neglected note to self
To write, to write, to write.
Chris Fettes, M.A., is an Instructor and Program Coordinator in the Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health.