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Poetry Archive Now Wordview 2021: The One Day Plan
by Ramona Herdman
Poetry Archive Now Wordview 2021: The One Day Plan
They say you can stand anything for a minute.
That’s how professionals do it.
The trick is to only believe in the minute.
Hood your eyes. Chin down. Focus
on where your feet are, where your heart is
this minute. The AA thing.
One day. One day. One day. One day.
Every day lately we wake up
and one of us suggests not drinking
tonight and the other agrees.
I don’t know if you’d call us professionals.
I’m reminded of the puzzle
where one of the guards always lies
and the other always tells the truth,
so you choose the door they don’t say.
The thing though with the one day plan
is sometimes you can’t stop yourself
believing in all the days afterwards
stretching like a corridor of doors.
Sometimes it’s the opposite trouble –
if today were all there was,
who’d want to waste their last evening sober?
Poem recorded as part of Poetry Archive Now: Wordview 2021. Used by permission of author.
A special thank you to our WordView 2021 poets.
Chair of the Judging Panel, Imtiaz Dharker, says: "An idea that began as a response to the world shutting down has, joyfully, become a way to invite the whole world in. It has been exciting to see the entries come in from different countries, from marginalised voices, from people of all backgrounds who now know this space belongs to them. My fellow judges and I were struck by the immediacy of experience and commitment to language in the winning entries. It's also good to think that the rest of the entries will continue to be seen as an invaluable record of our times."
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