A Road Becoming…
Poetry starts small,
a flicker the size of lint caught in sunlight,
the soft click of a lamp chain hesitating between off and on.
It arrives like a shy knock on the door
no louder than a moth’s wing,
yet somehow insisting you check who’s there.
A scent of rain on dust,
a half-remembered face behind glass,
a grocery list scribbled as if the pencil were dreaming of becoming a wand.
These faint sparks, these accidental nudges,
roll like pebbles waking a hillside that didn’t know it wished to move.
But soon the sparks bristle,
catching on the loose threads of thought
until the mind brightens,
a struck nerve glowing like copper wire,
a notion roaring up like a match that forgot it was small.
Ideas begin to leap fences, vaulting into the dark
where bolder fires wait to illuminate the unsaid.
Here…
The poem risks blistering its own hands,
shaping controversy the way ironworkers shape molten metal,
swinging purpose into form before it cools.
And somewhere between the flame of hope
and the shadow it throws,
a paradox stands grinning:
a poem that bruises and heals in the same breath.
Such poems,
the ones that matter,
walk willingly into unfamiliar woods,
leaving ash-soft footprints along a poet’s road less traveled.
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The one thing I missed about writing poetry was the ability to jot down a poem like a grocery list. When my hands quit handling pen and paper easily, I forgoed all that jotting down. And don't recall ever missing any items when buying groceries because I didn't have a list with me.
My less traveled road was always sitting down at a desk, a typewriter or computer, and not jotting down anything, even research notes. But getting to the business of writing from the memory of what I had gathered.
Much harder than notes, but the road that I traveled and still travel.
Ron
"I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."
Enjoyed your thoughts. Thanks. rlc