I rode the subway last night from Cambridge across the river to...

I rode the subway last night from Cambridge across the river to Boston and I looked at the people on the train. I’ll go ahead and admit: I fantasized about what it would be like to see someone sitting there reading Hammer Head on their trip home from work, and whether I would go up to them and say, hello I wrote that. I had a collection of poems by Robert Hass in my lap, Time and Materials, and my fantasy shifted. What if Hass got on this Red Line train and saw me reading his book, with a photograph of his face filling the whole back cover, and what if he tapped me on the shoulder and said, hello I wrote that. I decided I would stand without speaking and kiss his seventy-four year-old cheek.

Tumblr and Housing Works threw a party for the launch of the book (the photo above comes from that evening), and I shared the stage with Cara Nicoletti, Rosie Schaap, Kate Bolick, and Tumblr’s Rachel Fershleiser. It was extraordinary. Exhilarating and nervewracking and all of it happened so fast and I’m having trouble finding the words to describe it. One of the great pleasures of doing these events has been meeting and talking with people from Tumblr, to put faces and handshakes to the blogs I know as friends. I’m looking forward to listing all the Tumblr folks who’ve come out in a later post.

Back to poems though, a friend I met through blogging here, a photographer named Jon Creamer, came to a quieter reading in Concord, Mass. He shared with me some lines from W.S. Merwin. They felt like a gift and they’ve been echoing in my head these last days, important always and especially now. Maybe you’ll be glad to know them, too. “Just this,” it begins.

Just this, this room where we are. Pay attention to that. Pay attention to who’s there. Pay attention to what isn’t known there. Pay attention to what is known there. Pay attention to what everyone is thinking or feeling; what you’re doing there. Pay attention. Pay attention.

[Photo credit: Yvonne Brooks]