on a new notebook

It's an ironic shame: to write the first words in a new journal. To mar the page with ink and unformed thoughts seems a harsh reality compared to those moments before you put pen to paper.

Then, faced with a white expanse, you anticipate.

Or no, even before that, you anticipate.

Standing in the store before a rack of notebooks, you ponder which one should be yours. Pick one up; weigh the heft; run your fingers over the pages; is it the right size?

Choosing the notebook—black cover, college-ruled, three sections—you can't help yourself: your mind trips down literary paths, through poetic fields {if they were truly poetic, they'd be called "leas"}, across the ocean of discovery and words.

It's in this notebook, you sense as you stand in line to pay, that you'll write Worthy of Notice Things.

With a calling like that, it seems ridiculous that you should be forced to stand in a line to buy this—behind a man buying milk and next to a magazine rack stacked with salacious celebrity gossip.

Handing over bills and coins for this notebook: a business transaction. You scoff at that but hand over the bills and coins anyway, of course.

The clerk smiles at you—forced, required—and you smile back out of habit, but inside, you anticipate what you'll write in this notebook that's now swinging in a plastic bag, just hitting the back of your knee.