Writing thoughts

Gentle waves at a wetland sanctuary in Florida.
Can you see the poems written where the water crests and falls?
You have to really study the darks and lights, and this takes time.
Then, you'll realize the words are your own.

I've been trying to write in the little spaces between the excitement of iris bulbs poking up and the occasional jazz concert, mounds of laundry and hours of work.

I find poetry easier to come and go from than my visual art. I am more apt to pick it up and put it down again, much as someone else might with knitting, but even so, lately there's a frustration with not having a long steady run of "considering."

Sometimes that's all you can do - look at a poem in its various states of undress and hope that a solution will come forth and cover it elegantly. That kind of thinking takes time - the time of exploring the closet of your mind, seeing what's available, trying things on, checking the fit.

I catch myself staring out the window or standing in the shower with the water off, still wet. At those moments, I am visualizing the poem, the way it could be, the words forming a shape, and the shape becoming something more than what I had created on the paper.

And it is only when I have figured out where the poem might go that I step away from the water or the window. It is as if I was given a space, momentarily cleared of everything else, and on it wrote a new poem.