Recollecting the Young Poet

Image by @nicolasthomas via Unsplash

I've been a bit disillusioned with the project lately. “Wilderness," a friend aptly calls it. As a completely remote student, I long for a sustaining amount of connection with resources and people at my school. However, circumstances and personnel changes have thwarted this temporarily. 

 So I plug along. I try to recollect the young poet within myself who seems to be hiding in the safety of the root system of a tree, a frightened fox kit. Precocious and bold when she has lazy afternoons in the sun to play, but skittish and reticent when told she must produce on demand.

 The experienced writer in me knows that if I continue to work at it, something will come. But there are different dynamics in this project at play for me: history, holding people's stories in truth, and mining deeply hidden details to brush off and set in the bright sun. Right now I feel the lag of not creating to the timeline along with this consolation: for me, the bewildering process of making art is often a sublime encounter with Christ.

I decide to show up again.

Writing poetry is tedious when unicorns refuse to prance across the sky.

Inspiration comes from strange places:

a car almost nailing me in a parking lot,

the comfort of grilled cheese,

Parenting grief.

I need imagination to come from ancient people I’m asking to lend me their lives.

What I’m trying to do is be specific.

I play with frivolous forms.

Maybe this is the work:

Showing up to whatever the day delivers,

A package from someone I’ve never met.

This stranger sends me a coloring book, World magazine, and a Vivitar camera from 1988.

She tells me to write like a fifth grader,

The one who read her first epic poem (with German interspersed, no less)

in front of the entire class.

Live as if the kingdom really came to men and women

And you.

God can do anything.

I believe it for them.

I faith it for me.