Friday morning

The effort.

Thinking about writing. Or as Billy Collins puts it, figuring out what to say about "what it is this absence means, the two of us sleeping and waking under different roofs."

The Effort

by Billy Collins

Would anyone care to join me 
in flicking a few pebbles in the direction
 of teachers who are fond of asking the question:
"What is the poet trying to say?"

as if Thomas Hardy and Emily Dickinson
 had struggled but ultimately failed in their efforts—
inarticulate wretches that they were,
 biting their pens and staring out the window for a clue.

 Yes, it seems that Whitman, Amy Lowell 
and the rest could only try and fail
 but we in Mrs. Parker's third-period English class 
here at Springfield High will succeed

 with the help of these study questions
 in saying what the poor poet could not, 
and we will get all this done before
 that orgy of egg salad and tuna fish known as lunch.

 Tonight, however, I am the one trying 
to say what it is this absence means,
 the two of us sleeping and waking under different roofs.
The image of this vase of cut flowers,

 not from our garden, is no help.
 And the same goes for the single plate, 
the solitary lamp, and the weather that presses its face 
against these new windows--the drizzle and the
 morning frost. 

So I will leave it up to Mrs. Parker, 
who is tapping a piece of chalk against the blackboard,
 and her students—a few with their hands up, 
others slouching with their caps on backwards—

to figure out what it is I am trying to say 
about this place where I find myself 
and to do it before the noon bell rings
 and that whirlwind of meatloaf is unleashed.

"The Effort" by Billy Collins, from Ballistics. © Random House, 2008. Reprinted with permission.

Of course, we should not leave it up to Mrs. Parker and her students...to say what it means. And of course again, we should not figure it out before the noon bell rings.

But what is best remembered is the notion that the "image of this vase of cut flowers,

 not from our garden, is no help."

Flowers in a Crystal Vase

Manet