Poetry Friday: "I Stop Somewhere Waiting For You" (A Walt Whitman/Susan Thomsen/Chicken Spaghetti-inspired poem)

A few weeks ago, Susan Thomsen, at Chicken Spaghetti, posted a prompt: begin a poem with the last line (I stop somewhere waiting for you) of Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself." 

Susan's take on the prompt is here, and her "Flurries of Winter" is an enchanting take, full of joy and verve and love and snow. 

I went a different route, being the INFJ/Melancholic Eeyore that I am. 😏

I might've composed my response sooner if I hadn't tripped myself up by turning the prompt upside down. I'd gotten it fixed in my head that I should end the poem with the suggested line. I tried a number of different openings and approaches but none of them were working. Page after page of garbage. I decided to go reread Susan's post/prompt, thinking maybe I'd pick up some new inspiration. 

"Oh!" I said to my upside-downed self. "I'm going to START the poem with that line." Well. Okay then. Let's try that. 

I imagined being caught in a wretched kind of limbo with a friend or significant other or spouse — really anyone you're trying to have an authentic relationship with when you aren't getting anything in return. (I mean, truly ... we've all been there.) And then the poem wrote itself in twenty minutes.

The lesson here is to listen to Susan more closely the first time. But I think, in general, it's just good advice to listen to Susan. 

Okay, here we go: 

"I Stop Somewhere Waiting For You" 

         ~ Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself" 

I stop somewhere waiting for you. 

Somewhere.
Waiting.
For you.

It’s exhausting, being mired 

in this bog, slogging through
a swamp of unearned, unreturned 

hope and promise. 

I don’t really even know where I am.

“Somewhere”?
Who chooses to live there?

It feels like Wonderland,
and every bit as absurd.
You make me believe
six impossible things before breakfast
but by dinner time, I’m famished.

So I've decided.
I’m moving to a new anywhere.
I will learn its borders and boundaries as I go.
The plan is still fuzzy.

 
But I stop, somehow, waiting for you.

~~~~~~~~~~

Susan has the entire Poetry Friday round-up this week.

Visit her at Chicken Spaghetti and enjoy lots of poetic goodness.