Crossing

After spending several years focused on verse biographies, I’m writing a novel. This change wouldn’t be obvious to anyone on the hill on which I live, where neighbors mostly note the dogs by my legs, or maybe flashes of orange or red in hunting season. I don’t think change is particularly evident even inside the house, even to me. My handwriting is as messy as ever. Since the novel is historical, gorgeously old library books still waft their particular fragrance on my table. But my pages are more often filled to the margins. The stack gets thicker: I just broke past 300 pages, although who knows where I’ll be back when I take out bigger shears. I allow conversations to meander more, and build to grand misunderstandings or fleeting moments of love, ordinary as the click of a closing locket.

Those small moments within the sweep of action bring back the poet, who never entirely went away. She’s alert for alliteration, and blotting most out. Attentive to cadence, and making sure it seems honest.  And probably most of all hunkering over images with hands open like a child eager to catch a dragonfly or frog, then looks closely at what’s precariously held: for subtle beauty, and what this curious animal might say if she could speak. For signs of where she wants to go. 

And as a novelist for the time being, I get to follow with a wildly waving net.

You can celebrate Poetry Friday at A Teaching Life, a blog sure to inspire anyone who teaches writing, or teaches, or writes.