While staying in a hotel in Florida, the lady, who did such a good job of cleaning the room each day, suddenly asked, ‘How do you do it?’
‘Do what?’ I said, amused but confused.
She smiled and said, ‘How do you get the words to write your poetry?’
Well, I attempted to explain, but struggled. So, after some further thought I’m going to explain a little about the strange way I, and maybe other poets, ‘do it’. I will do this by giving an actual recent example of a poem I wrote.
I was taking a moment to look out of my large window, to watch the thick white clouds pass by smoothly and seemingly without a care in the world. As I watched, my wonder at these mighty beasts grew. I recalled the plane bucking and jumping as a result of the air current disruption they caused, and how they were just water held in suspension. I thought they were beautiful and majestic, yet their moods could change from friendly and peaceful to dark avenging anger.
As I looked, these kinds of thoughts appeared not from my brain or anywhere inside my head. They grew out of the spiritual part of me. Actually more, ‘appeared’, than ‘grew’, or you might even say ‘created’. The perception of something wonderful or perhaps even mundane, sparks an interest and out of that interest the words form. If that last vital piece of alchemy doesn’t occur, then there’s no poem and not much I can do about it.
For me they suddenly looked like, ‘rivers in the sky’. That phrase was what created my poem. Yet another phrase or sentence would have created a totally different poem.
Here is the result of my musing at the clouds outside my windows, and that phrase, ‘rivers in the sky’. I hope you enjoy it.
Rivers in the Sky
The winds above the clouds
In which the planes fly,
Sweep all before them
Like rivers in the sky.
Beyond the ken of man
And the wings of a bird,
An invisible force
Reachesspeeds unheard.
An alien presence
Blowing forever,
Driven by our planet
Bullying the weather.
So next time you look up
And see clouds scuttling by,
Know it’s the alien winds
Making rivers in the sky.
Until the next time, I trust you are working on being positive.
