It is holiday time and amidst the tornado-like whirl of shopping, decorating, traveling, baking, cooking, and gathering with family, friends, colleagues and community, of offering help in shelters and churches, it may seem hard to write. And even harder still to write to discover what is at the bottom of our hearts and minds. The litany form, listing, is of great help when we want to keep focused on writing. As we list, our design mind, the dreaming associational mind, goes to work helping us find our way to what hides between the many activities of our days and what hides beneath the cheer and camaraderie of our gatherings.

But what to list as a way to get going? I tried this list spurred on by a goal I made for myself:

I Am Going to Write a New Poem Today

I am going to write a new poem today, my newly-tall grandson
stretched out on the couch with a book about which he’ll say
“meh” though he reads it avidly for days.

I am going to write a new poem while the wall heater clicks
on, the heating bill extravagant as the thermometer reads below
30 degrees outside for days in our usually maritime climate.

I am going to write a new poem today with frost on the car windows,
my husband’s viola and bow hanging on a wall, his folded music stand,
a three-legged loiterer, the deer outside the window.

My new poem will have them grazing on now frosty native strawberries
planted years ago. This poem will be pleased with the ground the plants have spread
over and pleased with the patch still bald where the deer sleep.

My new poem will have an open box of pancake mix and a pan of bubbling
butter, chocolate chips my grandson wants to add, the early morning
image of my husband’s shirt sleeve peeking through a closed closet door.

My new poem will urge me on to what the coming new year will bring —
stacks of letters and emails to answer, student work to get back to, sweeping,
sweeping, clothes and sheets to wash, to fold and put away.

My new poem will remember last night’s wine glass on the counter, red
sediment at the bottom. It will linger over heartache and tears, runners of this life
spread over the days toward the 18th anniversary of my son’s dying.

My new poem cannot fill the patch of this absence, what is left of his leaving.

****

I did not know what items (images) would fill my list; I did not know where the list would end and with what impact. I looked around and made my list until I felt finished with the list. Now I see that the poem is filled with life and also with absence–once I reflected on the patch of ground the strawberries don’t fill I honor the emotional ground of my son’s absence.

There are so many I love, so many who fill my life with joy, so much going on around me that is big and so much that is small yet laden with meaning, but all happens now against the backdrop of a painful loss. The red sediment at the bottom of the empty wine glass along with the bald patch of ground combined inside the mystery of writing’s flow to move me to remember what a list for my “new poem” might have to contain at its very heart.

So, take some minutes this holiday season to write a litany and see what the images in list form deliver for you. Here are some list ideas in addition to the one I used:

Holiday to-do list

Holiday dinner menu

Holiday pet peeves

What I miss on the holidays

Childhood holiday memories

What I see outside my window when I stop to take a breath

Reasons to believe in Santa

What would I list if I wrote lists for every day

Remember that the key to making your writing fruitfull are specifics and details that use the five senses–what you see, smell, taste, touch and hear in the life around you.

And, of course, a simile or metaphor can help bring rich experience to the writer as well as to an ultimate reader.

For me, seeing my grandson stretched out on the couch, the music stand as a loiterer, the ground without the strawberries as worthy, and the wine glass still unwashed led to a mood that wasn’t about doing but about being still for a moment so a deep feeling that isn’t always given time could fill the space the poem created amidst daily life. We often disguise our emotions, as my reading grandson would about the book he was reading, to keep on going. But writing brings us back to the depth and authenticity of them if we come at the evocation sideways. Lists help us do that.