Two Poems by Ellen June Wright
You Ask Me Where It Comes From
It comes from anywhere and everywhere.
It’s the irritant that starts the nacre’s flow
within the shell, the thing that captures your
attention and won’t let go. Somewhere in the back
of your brain as you go about common duties:
washing dishes, folding laundry,
it begins to form until you pry your mind
open with a sharp knife, move the mantle
of the mollusk and roll the pearl between your fingers.
Inspiration can come slowly, grow like a jewel
at the sea’s bottom or like a stone flung from across
the street by some rude boy—drawing blood.
That’s just two ways a poem might come to be.
The Mistake
I made in the beginning I can’t take back, can’t undo.
It’s not like dropping a stitch in knitting—
pulling out the yarn, watching all your work
unwind until you get to the mistake and start again.
Life’s not like that. Most of the time you have
to live with a mistake.
Sometimes you have to watch it grow within you
for nine months, give birth to it, raise it,
feed it every day, come to love it, send it to college,
and deny it was ever a mistake at all.
Sometimes the mistake is invisible. It’s the absence
of something that should’ve been done.
I look back and see a hole in my life like a gap in a wall
or a fissure in a rock.
I try to fill it only to realize it’s bottomless.
Some mistakes I simply have to turn a blind eye to,
turn away from and pretend never happened.
I was never there.
Some mistakes require me to deny, to lie
and then get on with it.
Ellen June Wright was born in England of West Indian parents and immigrated to the United States as a child. She taught high-school language arts in New Jersey for three decades before retiring. She has consulted on guides for three PBS poetry series. Her work was selected as The Missouri Review’s Poem of the Week for their website and was featured in the article, Exceptional Prose Poetry From Around the Web: June 2021 by Jose Hernandez Diaz and recently received five 2021 Pushcart Prize nominations.