So Long: A Forgotten Gem

Lately, I’ve been sorting through old files, yeah, those paper manilla folders tucked into hanging files stored in file cabinets. My goal is to save or scan noteworthy remnants of whatever I find and trash the rest. Today’s find shocked me. It was on the last page of an article about creative writing, which is not surprising, since I have a multitude of articles and books about that. But the article ended at the top of the last page, and in the remaining space was my own handwriting—I’d scrawled a poem there. And not an insignificant one to me. Rediscovering this was like coming across a long-lost jewel in the bottom of a dresser drawer.

Now, I’m not saying the poem is a jewel because it’s great literature or in a perfected poetic form, smoothed out and polished. It’s a gem because it captures a highly significant moment in my creative writing life, one that you may find meaningful, too, if you’ve read Undertow.

The poem is dated April 8, 2007, the day I wrote it while sitting in a restaurant I frequented called Taste of China, near my office. That was two weeks before I followed through with the heart-wrenching, nerve-jangling, dive-off-the-diving-board decision to resign from the software company where I’d worked for nine years to write what ten years later became Undertow.

So Long

by Charlene L. Edge

… to Taste of China [the name of a restaurant I frequented near the office]

whose hot food on rainy days

enlivened me, gave me the courage

to go back to the office – work.

Comfort food, a cheery hello, the owner

even knows my name.

 

Nine years of lunches

nine years of a space where I

can take breaths of spicey, veggie-tinged air,

chicken, shrimp, veggies = L13

no, with white rice today and an egg roll,

I’m splurging.

 

Sometimes when I finish, the rain, too,

has let up. Sometimes, the sun

does shine. Some days, it’s so crowded

here I find nowhere to sit and carry

the tidy take-out box, wrapped in a white plastic

bag with the easy-to-undo knot back

to the kitchen on the third floor.

 

Today, two guys in white shirts eat egg fu young

and speak in Russian, their haircuts are trim,

large silver wristwatches sparkle at their cuffs.

A couple from my company, regulars like me,

sit next to my table whispering in-between bites

and sips of tea.

 

My own tea grows cold as I write.

Dionne Warwick belts out a pop song over the music system, “Don’t walk

away from me,” and I think, Ha.

Only two more weeks to go.

 

—–END—–

Thanks for reading!

Your writer on the wing,

Charlene