Allegory of an Unwritten Poem

This is not an official account of anything. It is not even, I think, that original. I've heard other writers talk about it. It has to do with process and following hunches and writing things down, often without knowing where the first jottings, or inklings, are leading us.

Over the holiday season, I sat in my favorite coffee shop with my wife. We were there during one of several morning rushes. As we sat and the door kept opening to the mild, 58 degree morning, the Christmas music kept reminding me, for some reason, of snow. Lines emerged, and I wrote them down, not sure what to make of them. They seemed the poetic equivalent of sound effects, but nothing near to a complete song.

After we left, I wrote the lines I'd composed in my head in my journal. It amounted to one stanza of little more than what we were doing: sitting in a coffee shop, where the crowd of latte seekers kept opening the door and coming in and reminding me of winter and the holidays in my childhood. I kept imagining boots scuffing off snow, but when I looked I saw only an occasional gust blowing in the leaves.

Not much to that, I guess. If I could make it rhyme, maybe it would be something.

Obedience Rewarded
That happened during the waning days of December, two months ago. I like my notebook--I like to look at what I've jotted down--even phrases that stand like abandoned docks on a lake, pointing nowhere. There's an affirmation in them. They remind me to keep going.

This past week, while involved in something else, that verse about the coffee shop and the opening door came to me, suddenly, as a first verse. The second verse might have something to do with my thoughts about our lost son. It might have to do with awareness of another world just out of sight to us but available through suggestion.



A title also came to me: Intimating.

We shall see. I'm still in process. And it is the first poem I am attempting in a while to make rhyme.

It may go nowhere. But it is the obedience that finally, sometimes, gets rewarded. There are spiritual applications to this as well as creative. I sometimes am convinced that the life of faith is the most creative path one can take, if only because so much remains unfinished and certainly very different from what we expect to happen. Our call is simply to follow. It is okay to question as we go. But keep going.

Thank you for reading.

I'd love to hear from you about your experiences with either composing or living out of faithfulness.