Starting and stopping—writing? driving? living?

Start, stall, stop

I started so many aeons ago
I began with a hiss and a roar
then (I seem to recall)
I stopped

I started again with a different approach
that allowed me to do so much more
then I hit a wall
so I stopped

I discovered a problem
I cut to the core
and I started again very small
then I stopped

I started again
with attempt number four
I went from a run to a crawl
then I stopped

I'm so clever! so keen!
more than ever before!
I believe I have learned
how to stop.

~ Rachel McAlpine 2021 ~

Starting? Stopping? Writing? Driving? Living? Old age?

I don’t know what that little piece of doggerel (“S-s-starting”) means. Do you? As a matter of fact, it came to me yesterday when I was thinking about memoir writing and also about double declutching. You know about double declutching if you used to drive an (already old) Baby Austin in the 1950s.

But I’ve kept the words abstract so they could remind you of something else that you have started—and stopped—many times.

Maybe it’s about looping. If you live long enough you get to recycle the same thought 1,000 times, usually believing that it’s quite original. Loopy is not a word we hear now. I thought it meant daft, but maybe it arose from old people repeating themselves. Looping.

But no. The poem’s subject or message is whatever you want it to be. That’s the beauty of poetry: you associate, you remember, you match the words to something in your own experience.

I do know these lines are about starting, stalling and stopping. Starting and stopping are both rather difficult. Stalling just happens.

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