The longer I live, the stranger the remembered facts of my life seem. Sometimes they seem so strange that they might be invented. I like it when that happens. I have lived my own life and a stranger’s.
- Eric Rensberger

Eric Rensberger is originally from Elkhart County in northern Indiana, but he has lived in southern Indiana since 1974, mainly in Bloomington. His work has been published in numerous journals and anthologies. His chapbooks include, amongst other titles, Letters, Standing Where Something Did, and Blank of Blanks, and he has indulged in more fugitive forms of publication such as posting poems anonymously on public kiosks, streetlamp poles, and bulletin boards in restaurants. He is a convinced and persistent self-publisher. His collected works can be found at ericrensbergerpoetry.net, which is home to his major work, the ongoing chronological series Account of My Days, at present consisting of more than 1,000 poems.

Welcome to the Poets Weave, I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey. Eric, what poems have you brought for us today?

WORDS

1.
a dictionary of badly named things
almost useless but for the momentous impulse it inspires
to search the words for better things they could be about

a dictionary whose lack of reference disturbs no one
whose pages are the great plain
across which words stir like grasses

a dictionary with no definition of accurate
a dictionary to be set aside
in service of a shared understanding

2.
I am trying to move you weighed down as you are
by all the world
using my breath only my breath

wind helps the sail
sail moves the boat
and over them both

a glaring sun so breathtaking
the words for how it feels to be under it
are out of reach

IT STARTED TO RAIN

I was only a short walk from the house
I went in and picked up the book lying on the table
there was nothing in it and really
I didn't need for there anything to be anything in it
it was enough to have a book
of white pages helpless as they sound
when I say it this way
begging to be spoken to

I have the book in my hands now
and the sound of rain in my ear
today it was in the 90s again
and it was like I'd known it forever
I was that familiar with it and its ways
and I thought for a minute about the burning sun
and the steam thickened air
and I wondered am I made for this?

A CURSING

to ready my mouth for the next breath
I empty it of the curses I've saved up
and as they breeze away
I think of you

I bet you've cursed me too
and maybe the direction the wind
carried yours carried them
toward mine

are they together now?
my shoulders slump
in the posture of resignation
just thinking of it

in profile I look like
a question mark standing by itself
without a question
so alone detached from its mystery

empty of curses I take a breath
and step into the shade to cool off
my innocence is no longer shy
it steps out to see through my eyes

ATTENTION

I open the window
to let the rain sounds in
who knows when I'll hear them again
life and the weather have become so strange
each moment like this needs your full attention
everything you've known has escaped or is barely here
and what you're used to thinking of as ordinary
as something so plain it's nearly invisible
is turning into an event to be noticed
even the simplicity of rain hissing
gets your full attention

You've been listening to the poetry of Eric Rensberger on the Poets Weave, I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey.