Listing

I was feeling overwhelmed the other morning. Just swirling, like a fly - all buzz but no landing. So I made a list. Honestly I should just make little word magnets that say LAUNDRY and DISHES and EMAIL and so on, all the things in my life that are never done, never settled, always needling. Then I could just arrange and re-arrange those words on my fridge and spare the paper I use to write those same words over and over each week. But it's the writing that does it - that captures all those floating, nagging tasks and pins them to the page. Then it feels like progress.

Still, listing is a word I love. Something about how the answer is in the question. The listing of a ship, the watery knees of feeling at sea. Listing as a stabilizer, like feet on dry land.

Listing

It could be the answer

to one of those word puzzles

on NPR Sundays

A word that is both the problem

and its own solution

 

Swaying mental towers

brought to attention in the quiet

confinement of columns and categories

clipboards and checkmarks

 

A line running though

an endless succession of

deadening upright endeavors

 

All leaning

All keening

 

Walled and blotted, a shake of the head

and a steadying breath of wind

lines of ballast on the ocean of the page