Arguing with Joan Didion

“Grammar is a piano I play by ear.”

Best way to play it — but

there are those who have no ear.

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”
And in order to avoid living.

In order to run away.

“I closed the box and put it in a closet.
There is no real way to deal with everything we lose.”

There is writing. There is always writing.

(Perhaps there is only writing.)

“I don't know what I think until I write it down.”

Me too — can’t argue with this.

“It occurs to me that we allow ourselves to imagine 

only such messages as we need to survive.” 

If that is so, some of us clearly need 

the vast and wide-ranging, 

the wild and fantastical.

“When I am near the end of a book, 

I have to sleep in the same room with it.” 

The book you are writing, or the one you are reading? 

I always sleep in the same room as those I am reading.

 “Time is the school in which we learn.” 

Yes? … yes, I guess so …  yes, I see … yes.

The 13th prompt for 'Poems in April' at 'imaginary garden with real toads' is to be inspired by one or more of the above quotes from Joan Didion. They are imteresting quotes in themselves, but I thought them too prosey to use for poetry — or perhaps it's just too late at night — and I took issue with most of them. That seemed to be the only poem I was likely to get.