Some people might call it inspiration. The actual process of writing can be a bit of a mystery. Personally, I think writers are magpies. We collect shiny things – like ideas- and take them back to our lair and then we rearrange all the shiny found objects and re-purpose them. So the poem I wrote this week has been constructed out of just such found objects: a question someone posed on Facebook, a memory from grade school, a deep conversation with a good friend, a personal musing on the nature of trauma and survival.
Inspiration for writing can be that random. But also, perhaps, it is best to just give the brain a rest. And I ‘parked my head’ yesterday and tried some art in a workshop led by a friend, Morag Donald, of Crafting Your Soul.
I cannot draw. But I love visual art. I love colour. In my next lifetime, if I can actually put in a bid, I would like to be a visual artist. But we did this thing called Touch Drawing, which is really just letting your hand play with shape and space. I have not felt so relaxed in months! And the flu last month felt a bit like a brain fever, with my mental concentration gone walkabout.
And this week’s poem.
The Unsolved Mysteries of the Multiverse
Escapee socks, uncoupled
Like train wagons
Those orphans in lonely sidings
One is a found object
Location known
Yet aimless and unpurposed
Its other is off
In some alternate space
Living an alternative story
Squirreled down a plughole
Or a portal, off to elsewhere
Steaming down the narrow gauge
But what of the remaining single sock
Discovered in the tumble drier?
Limp and lifeless
Who now populates the crowded compartments
Of the train
Still clattering down the line?
The unfound
The man that got away
The woman someone gave away
Somehow
The story has been interrupted
By a very important announcement…
Those left behind the line stories
Assemble like dusty manuscripts
Cliff hanging off the top shelf of a closet
The door is shut
It’s dark
But nothing is quite closed
The gnawing unknowing
Somewhere someone elsewhere is living
At this moment your story’s dénouement
Stung by the rude interruption, denied
Wondering if there will come a day
For having the courage
Or foolishness
Or intellectual curiosity
To do the necessary
Reach up, lift down
Sneeze at the dust,
Turn the pages, revisiting
Your story
The one that got away
Reappraise the theme
Snip the loose ends off the plot
Wrestle the angels of resolution to the floor
With, or without, a plan
Take it all back
The characters, places, problems
That disappeared like Houdini
Into some crack in the multiverse
But, unlike Harry, had not the trick
To come back from the fathomless
Having probed this mystery
Which turns out to be
Much like God
As the nuns once said
When evading explanation
It’s a mystery!
Call it your personal myth
Make us cry. Make us laugh. Make us clap.
You are the wonder of this tale
©Bee Smith 2018
Wow! this read was so good! Very nice! Thank you for the post:)
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Reblogged this on Morag Donald Reiki Master & Teacher and commented:
There’s no way of knowing how a session of Touch Drawing will affect you. In Bee’s case it helped this poem to come through. In my other life I offer monthly Touch Drawing circles as Crafting Your Soul, in County Fermanagh for creatives and those who are, but don’t consider themselves creative for we are all continually creating ourselves & our lives.
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Love what you said about writers being magpies! I agree! Amy
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Bookmarked….because I will read it again…..and again.
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Thanks, Rich! Re-reading of poems is always the highest compliment that gave be given to a writer. Doing a little internal happy dance!
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