Only vow

This year I vow to rebuild my poetry collection.

Off the top of my head, I lost:

Seamus Heaney

Marianne Moore

Louise Glück

Gwendolyn Brooks

Edna St Vincent Millay

E.E. Cummings

Don Paterson

Elizabeth Bishop

Alice Fulton
Lucie Brock-Broido
David St John
Anne Carson
Cherrie Moraga

So maybe I'll start with them.

I can't believe I'd be this hurt to remember a line, a word, a turn of phrase, and not be able to find the pages where it came from. That I'd only find nine poetry books on my shelf. Material things, yes, but mortality is material and I'll cling to what I can so long as I can.

Been struggling with the thought of letting go of what's gone, allowing space. But they weren't gone. They're in my head, in a printing press and in a bookshop, somewhere.