Today's poem by Esther Cohen

Yesterday a Friend a Very Good Friend Said

Esther what are you going to do

With all your poems?

Where will you put them?

How Will They All Add Up

What Will They Say When They Do?

When I was a little girl a very little girl

my grandmother lived with us

before my Uncle Alex drove up to our door

then drove her to LA.

We were at 43 Jackson Street

Ansonia Connecticut and then we moved

oddly enough to 43 Holbrook Street

also in Ansonia Connecticut it was not

intentional or unconscious either and my grandmother

I thought she was wise because she was old

she was much younger than I am now

my grandmother said to me

I was around seven you have a lot of poems,

so many poems in your room

you never have to do anything with all those poems

because they are poems.

But now, because of life speeding up

and because I live in New York City

Upper West Side in particular and because

Of Homeland and The Good Wife and Anti-Social Media

and because of books and ebooks and because of ambition

and NPR and the finite nature of life and because I am

a Jew not a Buddhist though I often wish

it were otherwise and because I do not meditate

when my friend

said to me What Will I Do With All These Poems

I said I Will Have a TV show or a podcast

or I will paint them or make a book or two

or turn them into shower curtains or poem wall paper

or make an audible app or maybe I will

just write poems.

Esther Cohen is co-editor of the new Jewish Currents art calendar. (type Channel Esther into the search bar)