Move Forward Into Story – A Poem
I’m standing in front of a blank canvass.
It beckons me forward and I feel a tingling
in my fingertips as they itch for a wand
to channel creativity through.
I look down and expect to see
a brush dripping with paint
or a piece of charcoal smudging my fingers.
Instead, I see a pen gripped and ready.
Its vibrating slightly as if it already
knows what its going to write.
I place the pen on the canvass,
as visual art is another way to
tell a story, to catch a moment in time
standing still so that we can
observe its beauty. When the pen
touches the canvass, I watch as
lines of ink flow out from the tip
of the pen. These lines swirl across
across the canvass and shape themselves
into a form that is taken from my memory.
The lines begin to move so the whole
picture looks as if it is real.
I see a boy sitting with a journal in hand,
clutching a pen much as I am now.
He begins scratching the paper with
his pen, making words along the page.
I watch as the worlds he’s creating
come to life in front of his eyes
and the wonder he feels as being able
to harness this magic. It takes me a moment
to realize that the boy is me, that this
was the moment I first put pen to paper.
I move my own pen along the canvass
and the lines move and shift once more.
As the lines begin to twist into shape,
I see a young man, holding a book he
wrote for the very first time, holding his words
as if the book were a child. The young man
turns his face and I see myself.
I look more closely at the canvass
and see the title of my first book,
the words that I had typed out
filled with their own special kind of magic.
The book itself is shining and, even through
the canvass, I can feel its pulsing heat.
I move my pen one final time,
watching as the lines shift and move
into a shape. I lean my face closer
to the canvass and see that the lines
are actually all made up of words and letters,
The lines of words shift and move
and there is the sound of bells in the air
as if something I cannot see is singing to me.
When the lines stop shifting, I am
looking at myself as I am now,
my holding a pen against a canvass that is
moving and changing as I look at it.
I almost take my pen away from the canvass
when the me on the canvass turns and gives me
a soft smile, as if it knows my momentary fear.
I keep the pen on the canvass and watch
as the lines shift once more. They become
a doorway. The door is situated in the midst
of a meadow. I can flowers in the grass
moving and shifting in the wind.
There is a tree in front of the door
and its branches also bend and shift,
almost as if welcoming me to enter,
beckoning me forward to the unknown.
Slowly, the doorway opens but I am
not afraid. I blink and then the doorway
is in front of me, the meadow around me.
I can hear the whisper of the wind
through the grass, hear the creak of the
tree as it continues to wave in the wind.
I hear the sound of bells again and
they sound like music. I know that
I have nothing to fear, that these
are my words that are surrounding me
and they mean me no harm. I step forward
through the door, knowing I can return
any time I want to. I may not know what
is on the other side of the door,
but the only thing I can do
is move forward into story.
