Go: Learning to Release What No Longer Belongs
Day 18 of the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project
There are moments when change feels less like a beginning and more like an unraveling. We shed pieces of ourselves, sometimes willingly, sometimes because the world has already begun pulling them away.
Writing a poem every day for the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project has become an exercise in surrender. Not every thought arrives fully formed. Not every image offers an explanation. Sometimes the language must wander before it discovers what it has been trying to say.
Today's poem, "Go," explores the uneasy space between holding on and letting go.
Here in Indonesia, I have been thinking about what it means to release old narratives about ourselves. There is a difference between abandoning the past and allowing it to stop defining the present. I am learning that I can carry my history without carrying every burden that came with it.
"Go" moves through fractured images and unexpected associations, reflecting the way change rarely follows a straight line. Sometimes, what remains after the unraveling is not an answer but simply the freedom to continue.
Go
We sloughed bespoken
after the tree drifted.
Yellow leaves along the river
are run down.
The city settles atop your tongue
once oil has taught
the eel out of its charm
aside the morning clouds—
neglected against time.
After the bed licks your toes—
fold.
Without their delayed covering,
I see
the tree complete
its denial no more.
I wake now with the silt-dragged river
bedraggled, the wind-drifted
trees
released
and the
hot city
never
settled
how the
dwellers
praised God
when
your oil-layer
was ablaze—
cool
as the
tail of
your chin
and as
biting.
About the 30/30 Project
Throughout October, I am participating in Tupelo Press's 30/30 Project, writing a new poem each day in support of independent poetry publishing.
The challenge is teaching me something beyond the discipline of daily writing: creativity requires a willingness to enter uncertainty. Some poems emerge with clarity. Others ask us to remain inside the questions.
"Go" is one of those poems.
Thank you for following this journey, reading my work, and supporting the literary arts. Your encouragement makes this daily practice all the more meaningful.
Thirty days. Thirty poems. A continuing journey through language, memory, and becoming.
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