After several lucrative years as a poet, I finally had enough money set aside to pursue my passion: corporate law.
Without telling my parents—poets both—I put my typewriter into storage and applied for a summer internship. Twelve whole weeks of long days and late nights, totally unsullied by pay. I could barely contain my excitement!
That first day, as I crossed the bridge into Manhattan, I thought of all the great corporate lawyers who’d gone before me. This was their city, the backdrop to their limits of liability, its pulse echoing throughout their mutual non-disclosure agreements.
Walking in the shadows of these giants, something stirred within me. I had long dreamed of being counted among their number. But that dream had felt so far away. Now—here—I could almost taste it.
I thought back to my former life, blinkered, bound by the golden shackles of poetry, forced to scribble my draft pleadings in the margins of my unsolicited free-verse submissions.
If only I knew then what I know now.
In those days, whenever someone asked me what I did, I mostly said I was a poet. Though it deadened me, it felt honest; it’s what paid the bills.
Occasionally, when drunk, I might say, “I dabble in the law.”
Some more established, salaried lawyers would tell me that whether I was or wasn’t a lawyer was really just a matter of mindset. If I woke each morning feeling like a lawyer, having slept poorly like a lawyer, and went about my day in a lawyerly fashion, then who was to say otherwise?
Invariably, some contrarian would chime in, telling me that, actually, it’s quite clearly set out in Section 478 of the New York Judiciary Law, and I should be careful.
“Listen to us,” I’d say, “tossing around legislation like a bunch of lawyers.”
Then I’d slip them my business card and leave, telling them I had to make a very important call with some bigwigs on the West Coast.
And now here I am, an unpaid legal intern, setting up calls with bigwigs on the West Coast.
Some days, I’ll bump into an old poet friend, and when I tell them about my career change, they all say the same thing: you finally did it!
I sense in their reaction a kind of vicarious joy. One of us has escaped. Though they are still wandering their respective deserts, I have made it to the Promised Land.
It makes me happy, knowing that they are happy for me.
Soon, though, the summer will be over. My savings are running low, and rent is due. And even though I feel like I have lived—truly lived—every day of the last 12 weeks, I know it can’t last forever. It was silly, really. What was I thinking? There are things I want in life. A family. A home of my own. If I’m being greedy, health insurance. None of these things come cheap. As daunting as it is, I know I must return to verse. I can’t intern forever.
I go to my storage unit, remove my typewriter, replace it with my suit.
I throw my business cards in the trash.
I will always cherish my summer as a corporate lawyer, but I gotta eat.
It’s time to grow up.
Maybe in a few years I’ll have another crack.
They say we all have a story to tell, that there’s a petition for a writ of mandamus inside all of us.
I hope that’s true.
Simon Webster is an Australia-based journalist
