Dancing in the Back Room

This is what no one sees.
The place where the work is done, complete
with scraps, Sawed boards, half-filled
cans of paint. Tools broken in the process
of doing the work badly
until you learned the muscle memory
of creating this life you now live.
The work. Never pretty, at least not for me.

Sheryl Crow plays on the stereo,
Rickie Lee Jones. Quirky music.
The stuff you listen to in your better moments
of creation. A bit of dancing happens,
even when you are making mistakes.
especially when you make mistakes.
All from the back room, where the mistakes live.
Where the magic happens. Where the work lives.

About this poem

About creating. About how much people do not see in our lives. About the role of music in my sanity. About the work people who fight emotional battles – trauma, depression, anxiety – do. Those people are my heroes.

The picture was taken behind a boathouse in Provincetown, Massachusetts. The music referred to are songs playing here in the coffee shop where I am writing this. Sheryl Crow’s “All I Want to Do (is have some fun)“, and Rickie Lee Jones’ “Chuck E’s In Love”

Sooner or later, everything in my life ends up in a poem.

Tom