The First Poem

I once listened to Seamus Heaney give a reading at Harvard on an October evening.  It was warm enough that all the tall windows of Emerson Hall were open. Once the fire marshall starting kicking people out, they went outside and hung onto the sills so they could still listen.  Something he said that night has stuck with me for many years.

He talked about the importance of finding a place to write; whenever he has moved, he has never felt at home until he has begun his first poem.  That was, he said, the sign of whether or not he would be comfortable in that place.  For him it was a ritual, a baptism of creativity.  This warm July morning, I woke up with the first lines of a new poem running through my mind.  I am grateful for my own independence.