The Blue Notebook

Delights & Shadows is the volume of poetry for which Ted Kooser won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005.
I am enjoying reading the copy I got last time I went to Des Moines.


This is another poem to which I relate:

A Spiral Notebook

The bright wire rolls like a porpoise
in and out of the calm blue sea
of the cover, or perhaps like a sleeper
twisting in and out of his dreams
if you wanted to buy it for that,
though it seems to be meant for
more serious work, with its
college-ruled lines and its cover
that states in emphatic white letters, 
5 SUBJECT NOTEBOOK. It seems
a part of growing old is no longer
to have five subjects, each
demanding an equal share of attention,
set apart by brown cardboard dividers,
but instead to stand in a drugstore
and hang on to one subject 
a little too long, like this notebook
you weigh in your hands, passing 
your fingers over its surfaces
as if it were some kind of wonder.

My notebook with the calm blue sea cover is from the early 90's, one I had for practice writing using subject prompts. It is the one I took with me to the writing group that was meeting at Barnes and Noble when the bookstore was at 22nd and University in Clive.  I know that because all the members of the group and their reasons for being there I noted on the back page.
I remember the one man who would not say what his profession was and my daughter correctly guessed he worked for the IRS. He was reluctant to divulge that, worried that someone might have issues with the government service he worked for and judge him accordingly.

I've had a couple five subject notebooks. I'm not particularly fond of them. Like Kooser, I no longer have five subjects each demanding an equal share of my attention. I do well to once in awhile write anything in longhand in a notebook.

But I still treasure those college ruled notebooks I have used. And I still pick up new ones, passing my fingers over the covers, fanning the pristine pages, wondering, "if I had a new notebook, could I, would I write poetry"? Or fill it with those deeper, more private thoughts I don't share here?

Pen and paper; they do evoke in me some kind of wonder.