I

I filled the poetry notebook I’ve been working in for the past year. The first lines in the book were written on June 27, 2005. The last were written last night. A year.

The first lines were written at a bed & breakfast in Calistoga. I was sitting on a lounge chair on the little patio by the pond.

The last lines were written sitting on the edge of the bed. I was thinking about this book as a unit. As with the dates making a unit, June to June, one year, there were so many sheets of paper bound together making this book. I don’t know how many. I haven’t counted them. I don’t know how many poems I wrote in the book. They are contained, like the days, in one unit. A book.

The title, a title I gave it somewhere past halfway, is: I

The first two lines on page one go:

I could say something,
but that would be telling, wouldn’t it?

And the last two sentences of the piece I wrote last night:

Its title is on the unbending spine: your name. Or is that the author?