There They Are Again

A poem about walking, landscape, and belonging. Plus a question about publishing poems on Substack.

My kids are both back at school now. I miss them. But they’re both doing okay, so we’re dong okay, too. And I’m remembering some of the nice things about a nest that is not quite so full.

The pace of life changes when the kids head back to college. The laundry doesn’t pile up so high. The refrigerator is less full, and the milk lasts longer. It gets easier to plan meals. I love cooking for my kids, but additional people bring additional preferences, more complicated schedules. My husband and I enjoy cooking together. We’ve done it for years. But we also enjoy that moment when we’re discussing what to make for dinner and one of us says, “Or…” and we walk down the street to our local restaurant, sit at the bar, and split a burger.

When it’s just the two of us, we walk more. We’ll head out after dinner and walk around the neighborhood or around the cove. Sometimes we’ll walk the two miles into downtown and grab dinner there before walking home again. The kids find that a bit strange. (“You walked all the way there?? Why would you do that??”) I try to explain that it feels good to land on the couch after a long walk, like we’ve earned our leisure. Plus, walking and talking together is, in my mind, one of life’s greatest pleasures.

This week’s poem is about those walks, that familiar landscape, and the contentment of belonging to place that feels like home.

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There They Are Again

At night when we walk
around the cove and the tide is in, 
the water laps at the edge 
near the road and the moon 
and the stars reflect on the surface,
reaching long wavering arms
of light across the salt water 
and toward the path.
They point as we walk, like 
they are tracking our progress
for each other, the way we
point at the peregrines
that fly over the garden.
There they are again, we say
although we’re not really 
certain if we are seeing
the same pair each time. 
But we like to think we are 
because it makes them 
familiar and part of our world.
So the moon and the stars 
point toward us as we walk.
And they say to each other
Look, there they are again,
without knowing for sure
it was us they saw on
the boulevard the night before. 

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To Paywall, or Not to Paywall: A question for Substack poets

Like a lot of poets here, I struggle with how much of my poetry to share on Substack. While some lit journals have altered their stance on previously published poetry and are seeing their role more as curator than discoverer, there are still a great many that will not accept for submission any poem that has been shared publicly anywhere, even on a personal blog or social media.

It’s hard to be a poet in a vacuum. Being able to share work with readers is so important. The feedback is helpful. I’m often so surprised by which poems seem to resonate the most with readers. It helps me to see my writing with something like an outsider’s eye. It makes me a better poet. We’re not all able to access a skilled peer writing group in the real world. Substack has given me structure and an audience. It’s invaluable.

But if I want to submit my work to a contest or lit mag I have to hide it away, shield it from view. Before I came to Substack, my only readers were my husband and kids. They are still some of my most important readers, but I have come to love this poetry community. I’m really struggling with how to keep writing here AND keep submitting my work. I’m fighting the feeling that sharing a poem here is akin to throwing it away for purposes of publication.

I’ve thought about turning on paid subscriptions, not for income purposes, but so I have a way to make certain posts private, shield them public eyes when I submit something I’ve already shared. Technically, they will still have been published. But if they are currently unavailable, maybe that’s okay? It’s sort of a letter of the law vs. spirit of the law thing.

Substack poets, what do you think? How do you maintain a publishing schedule here and still have “fresh” poems to submit to journals? Does hiding poems behind a paywall sound smart or sneaky to you? Do you use a paywall as a way to create private space?

Let me know in the comments.

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Thanks for reading, everyone.