To sit and stare at a blank space
\nwhere words are supposed to be
\nis the enigma that I face today:<\/p>\n
should I write about nothing or
\nshould I pretend there is something
\nand just start typing?<\/p>\n
I feel a fizzle where my imagination
\nis supposed to be; surely I could write
\na playscript or a radio script or a film script
\nbut no; all I have to do is write a poem.<\/p>\n
Before sundown.<\/p>\n
Hah!<\/p>\n
Words sit on the shelves of my brain
\nlike unripe olives that will not leave the tree
\n(talk about your mixed simile!)<\/p>\n
Maybe the words sit on the branches of my brain
\nlike olives with their pages glued together.<\/p>\n
All I can think of when I think of olives is
\nthe delicious olives of Tuscany, which we cannot
\napproximate here because Canadian merchants will not sell
\nolive oil that is opalescent, the way they sell it in Italy<\/p>\n
I prefer olives that are stored in olive oil to
\nthose stored in vinegar.
\nThat makes me hungry; I think I’ll stop and have some olives.<\/p>\n
This is what I write when I’m blank.
\nAt least it’s writing.<\/p>\n
Sorry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
To sit and stare at a blank space where words are supposed to be is the enigma that I face today: should I write about nothing or<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,14,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creative-writing","category-exercise","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}