So that's the question the counselor asked. Earlier that day, a friend asked me a similar question, Why did you first want be a poet?
I can never answer questions like that. Is want the operative verb? Is it even a poet I want to be? The questions make me feel caged somehow. I am not sure why.
Maybe because I just don't have an answer. I know what I want to experience, but not what I want the end to be. Or look like.
I imagine that if I were an artist, say a painter, I might have a goal in mind, perhaps to get into a certain show or sell my work or just paint a tree or something simple. I don't even know what I am going to write about most of the days when I sit down . . .
Instead I mostly just try to dive in. I want to be like the third one in the Ritsos poem.
