A Fancy Word for a Simple Thing

I'm reading Jack Kerouac which surprises me. The book's called Big Sur, written after his fame and late night talk show appearances. It reminds me a little of Thoreau and Walden Pond, a book I resented having to read in college. ("Why do I want to read the spewings of some white man with the luxury of sitting in the woods doing nothing all day?" I think my reasoning went.)

The difference here is, I like Big Sur, maybe because it's all gloomy and dreary as he sits for weeks in a cabin in one of the earth's most beautiful places, confronting his distressing moods all alone. Since this is something I've long imagined myself doing - spending weeks alone in the wilderness facing my demons - and I know that I don't have the nerve to do it for even a weekend - reading it is almost a relief.

I'm now thinking about a poem I wrote, a set of poems, really, five tidy little pieces which dozens of literary magazines have rejected. Not even my editor would put them in my book, but I can't stop loving them. They were a response to some of the photographs in an Annie Lebovitz show called Pilgrimage, a unique exhibit because it featured photos of places instead of people: Pete Seeger's workbench, for example, or Elvis's television.

I felt the muse and took frantic notes while still in the museum as my companion waited patiently. I wrote the poems in a few short weeks following the exhibit. It turns out there is a term for this kind of poem - "Ekphrasis" - defined as "a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art." Such a fancy word for a simple thing.

Anyway, here's the one I wrote called "Thoreau's Bed."

Like almost everything today

it was made in China --

He built that one-room cabin

with his bare hands - but the bed --

some hardworking underpaid

pre-Mao foreigner wove it by hand --

He picked it up on the docks

of Boston harbor --

It was supposed to be a sofa --

but only God and maybe the ship’s captain

know how it devolved into