When I thought I’d become a poet my head was as empty as a young male’s under-developed frontal lobe can be. In hindsight I can see it now. It was hiding in plain sight, the poetry, waiting for me to catch up decades later.

Three Catalan workmen, a slab of membrillo, a crusty loaf of bread, a jug of vino blanco del país. Me, my Spanish fiancée and her parents on excursion to the monastery of Montserrat. The workmen sat near our outdoor cafe table chowing down, savoring a simple merienda in each other’s company. I followed their motions, registered their patter, with no conscious interest. The tableau they embodied was etching itself unawares onto whatever surface I retrieve it from now. 

I’m wary of appeals to encoded symbolism, gestures towards nebulous profundities, which stud a certain strain of discourse around poetry. Precise detail speaks louder. The cracked yellow handle of the little knife one man used to cut the guava paste he smeared on his hunk of bread. How he wiped its blade on his trouser leg before passing it to the next man. The ceremonious flourish with which they poured rounds into their drained glasses. Their laughter eliciting a prim cluck from my mother-in-law to be. 

Wiry laborers at rest, scarfing their fare hungrily, with zest inhabiting their moment fully as I eyed them sidelong from mine. I was constructing the poetry from it subliminally; didn’t know it at the time, much less how to write it. Still don’t. It’s not that it’s too late now; it’s that it’s always too late. At that very dawning, and perhaps when you find someone to love, is when poetry starts to make sense, if ever.

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