Morning

Morning

The breeze is cool and
the house is quiet.
There is only me
and the chirping robins,
only me
and shifting curtains,
only me
and my comfortable darkness,
dappled now 
in maple-leaf light. 

The Prompt

Yesterday, I had the rarest of rare mornings—my youngest child slept a solid two hours past his normal wake up time. I sipped coffee on the front porch, made the 40-minute roundtrip drive to drop one of my other children off at his cross-country practice, walked our dog for several miles, made pancake batter, and still, my little one slept. I didn’t know what to do with myself; surely I would be interrupted soon? I opened up my notebook and decided to write a quick, throwaway poem about whatever came to mind. I figured if I was lucky, I’d have five minutes to dedicate to the task. I didn’t start with any particular inspiration, just with bare observation—the breeze is cool, and the house is quiet. I didn’t know where I would go from there. I just let the words happen.

What I landed on isn’t going to win any awards, but I like it. I like the way the phrase “my comfortable darkness” took me by surprise—that I wrote it without even knowing what I meant by it (though I have three after-the-fact explanations that all feel true to me). I like that when I get out of my own head, writing a poem feels less like I’m searching for some poem living inside of me and more like I’m finding myself living inside of a poem.

Sure, we write poems, but I think it’s just as true that poems write us.

For those of you who would like a prompt to play with . . . zoom out from your day and notice the odd little pockets of time that aren’t spoken for. The minutes waiting at an inordinately long red light. The 90 seconds you spend staring at the microwave, waiting for it to ding. The minutes that you might be quick to fill by checking social media or doom scrolling news headlines. When you arrive in one of these pockets, can you turn it inside out and shake a poem loose?

Tell yourself it can be a throwaway poem. Tell yourself that what lands on the page doesn’t need to make sense to anyone, including you. Tell yourself that since you only have a minute or two anyway, there’s no need to filter yourself. Let what happens happen. Maybe your poem will simply reflect your physical surroundings. Maybe it will hold a mirror up to your state of mind. Maybe you will be surprised by where it takes you. Maybe what emerges in those few minutes will be a poem you’d like to share. Or maybe it will just be the beginning of a poem that you come back to later in some longer stretch of moments. Either of these is a lovely outcome! And if all you find are crickets? Well, surely that space dedicated to openness and creativity is still better than an equal time spent doom scrolling, regardless of what does or does not emerge.

I look forward to reading your poems and comments!