Looking out over the crowd, my heart sank a little. I had advertised my poetry reading about as vigorously as I could, given that I don’t have an E-mail list anymore (new computer). But the crowd was small. Indeed, it filled the little space in the basement bar where we were reading. While I have few expectations for such events, better attendance would have been a boon to spirit.
As it was, I figure after all the times I’ve read my work or gave speeches, one gets the same show as a hundred and I wasn’t going to let my deflated ego get in the way of good entertainment—as I believe that any reading should be entertaining. Certainly, many would argue that the poems are the point, that there’s an elevation that comes from the words. But I think you can’t enjoy the words as much if the way they are presented bores the life out of you.
Size matters, no matter what anyone will tell you. It’s been a dry season for me. Since starting at the Post Office in December 2019, I haven’t been to readings, much less read anything of my own. Writing has come hard the last three years. Few poems, few essays, and a measly bit of a book that I have doubts about. The job takes up space, particularly if I let it. And since I’m not fond of working for a living, it’s easy to get down on myself about my station in life at this time. A few more people, strangers to hear what little I did have to say would have boosted my low morale.
Be that as it may, I stood at the podium and gave my best effort. The whole time, I was thinking how I got here. I mean, how did I wind up pinning so much on this particular reading?
It was a fluke, something of a clash of interests and circumstances. As I’ve written before, the Post Office hired me when no one else would. It took all my time at first, 60-70 hours a week, 18-20 miles a day. I couldn’t write even when I had to—and I often have to. I even had to put my beloved teaching at a local community college on hold due to the lack of time, not to mention the energy.
Then, in April 2021, I moved from assistant to career carrier. I landed my own route, something that doesn’t have a lot of hills or steps. My workload went down. I was carrying only 8-10 hours a day, five days a week, and only 13-14 miles a day.
Some people say it must be great to walk for a living. And it is. I’m out in the breeze all day in all kinds of weather, something that suits me. The customers are friendly, and everyone like to see the letter carrier.
Even still, carrying mail is a rigorous game, seven and eight hours on the hoof. My daily miles include a few businesses, the rest houses in neighborhoods. I always tell people who want me to wax poetic about the mythical aspects of the job that putting on your shoes and walking seven miles out and back is a lot different than putting in 14 miles of shoe leather, starting and stopping almost 500 times and under the pressure of time and management.
So, even if my work time has diminished a little in the jump from assistant to career carrier, the way the job bumps into my creative time has not. Many is the night when I settle into my chair with a head empty as a soap bubble. The physical rigors and the ways I have to arrange the job and the rhythms of the work days in my head leave me physically and mentally exhausted.
I sit there and stare at my lonely journals. Just one poem, I say to myself. Just a few hundred words. Though I’ve been by myself most of the day, there has been little time to think. This is the only job I’ve ever had that demands my full attention every minute. I have to be present or I miss a stop or misdeliver a letter or forget a package in my satchel. Thus, what many people may believe is a time of contemplation out there walking among the suburban lawns is really a time of intense focus on what comes next. I don’t have anything for the journal or for the page because I have had no time to think.
I complain. But I have a job with good benefits, or at least one that pays the bills and insurance. Many people struggle more with money than we have had to these last three-plus years. We look toward a bright future, security-wise.
That’s why this little reading meant so much to me. I suppose I was looking for affirmation when I should have been enjoying the moment, which is why the size of the crowd mattered.
But again, that nagging question: How did I get here? I did everything I was supposed to—sought broad life and educational experience, adventured and followed my heart. Then, it all led to a postal route?
And I look back at what happened at the reading. The first poet on the bill was great. During her reading, I took a lot of heart from the way the crowd responded to her words. She filled the room with a good feeling and hunger and thirst for more poems.
When it was my turn, I read with aplomb, forgetting for a moment the number in the audience and the great pressure I put on myself to perform well. I did what I always do in front of a crowd. I stopped thinking about myself and just sat back to listen what was flowing from my mouth.
And, now, after writing this little bit, I realize I got exactly what I needed out of that reading. The poems were good, the crowd responsive. Some people came out to listen to what I had to say.
That should be enough. Work and life will intervene, as they have all these years I’ve struggled to write. But the event made me realize that poems live in me. That book I’m stuck on will find its way to the end. I’ll have the time someday and I will use it. I am a writer, and that’s what writers do—find the way to fill a page.
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