When the Words Come
I don’t know that I’ve shared publicly how writing has gone for me the last few years; I more or less lost the ability to string together long stretches of words to make books out of, and stories became disjointed fragments that I could barely catch.
I’ve been writing anyway, content with small thoughts expressed, but my mind has been improving (for a variety of reasons, but no illusions here: I am a former fighter pilot soaking in the cooler air aloft in balloons these days). I have been able to express myself; concoct thoughts, find words, a lot of the important fundamentals are coming back. But the skill I used to have, of collecting unimaginably large ideas and sorting them up in my head like a magic trick, well, that I think is gone permanently. But I still enjoy a long sentence that makes sense; I like to see words well-edited now and then. 🙂
Anyway. Tonight I was just sitting down to listen to some music before bed, and this little thing popped into my head. “When the Words Come,” and it makes me feel the juice again, a little bit, and that’s a happy. This is why I still write will no real hope of any more publication: the writing itself is beautiful.
That lovely
infinite stretch of time
when words arrive
on the back of steam-snouted horses
in the chill air of misunderstanding
snow underfoot, but the
well-shod truths
bear their complexity with
strength, led by witch’s visions
stepping off the horses
the horses now quiet and
diminished:
silences departing
the postman delivers the envelope
with a cotton-gloved hand,
the hind-brain opens it and
spirits fly forth
damnations hand-in-hand with
terrors and angels and
understanding dawns, the
entire mess
still stuck like pins in that one word:
the forebrain has it now
all the words that came before
suddenly making sense and
expectations form of words
yet to come
nothing,
nothing,
this beautiful will come again
and yet angels are lined up
overhead, unseen, laughing
with the words of the future moments,
and the poor writer bears up as
best she can:
a heart can almost break
when the crazy world
threatens
to make some small sense