the last book I ever read (What You Have Heard Is True by Carolyn Forché, excerpt nine)

from What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance by Carolyn Forché:

The harvest was coming to an end, so everyone was off in the coffee. The bicycle-powered water drum idled in the shade, with the metal backpacks arranged in a row beside it. There was a whining sound in the metal swing-set frame that held the drum as the wind passed through it.

“I have some things to take care of here, so why don’t you write for a while,” he said almost gently, “write some poetry.”

Write some poetry, I whispered to myself when he had left. Just like that, I thought, pick up the pen and open the notebook to a blank page.