Sunday, August 20, 2017

Some Mornings

Some mornings
I sit at my desk
the way a man
might sit on the shore
and gaze out at
the water of a lake
or the sea watching
the patterns of light
and clouds shifting
on the surface.

Some mornings
I sit at my desk
and gaze at the
empty page as if
it’s the still surface
of a pond, unruffled
by the wind, undisturbed
by the fish swimming
below, a mirror reflecting
the sky above without
giving a hint at the mystery
that is hidden below.

Some mornings
I sit at my desk
and wait for words
to appear, for the slightest
hint of movement,
for a sign of life,
and I listen to my
breath and close
my eyes and wait.

Some mornings
I sit at my desk
and nothing appears
and I hear only
the drone of the fan
spinning on the ceiling
and the sound of
my breath when I inhale
or the sound of someone
else in the house putting
a teapot on the stove
to boil.

Some mornings
I sit at my desk
and watch the surface
of the page ripple
with life, words swimming
across the paper tugging
at the lines I dropped
in the water, filling
nets, the page awash
with words, overflowing
with words, words spilling
over the edge of one page
and falling onto another.

Some mornings
I sit at my desk
full of faith
that words will
come and I will
be able to catch
them with my pen.

Some mornings
I sit at my desk
not knowing if anything
will appear, filled
with doubt and anxiety
that I’ll starve,
that I’ll hear nothing
but silence the rest
of my life, that I’ll
drown not in words
but in the pages
of an empty journal.

Some mornings
I sit at my desk
and wonder
at the miracle of
creation—of love
and life, and words
and stories,
of ink and charcoal
and wood pulp
and forests and
rivers and seas,
of clouds and sky
and wind and rain,
of how the miracle
of each breath
is filled
with poetry.

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2 comments:

Dianne Ochiltree said...

Beautiful blog post!

Bruce Black said...

Thanks, as always, Dianne, for the kind words. So glad you enjoyed the posting. Good luck with your morning writing!