I’ve been running around poems the past week. Unable to settle on one I want to sit with. It’s all feeling. Sticking your hand into murky water, waiting for a bite. In Oklahoma they call this noodling. I’m not a big beefy man with hairy arms and cut-off camo, but I still feel like I’m driving the boat a little drunk. I still feel like I’m plunging my arm into brown water, feeling around dark catfish holes, hoping for a bite – from a fish, not an 80-year-old snapping turtle. I think the guys who do that for fun are crazy. But maybe that I dig around for words and feelings would make me crazy in their eyes, too.

I wish there was a writing rhythm. But I haven’t found it yet. It’s an ebb and flow, a friend said, and she’s right. There’s nothing linear about writing. It’s waves, eddies, ripples, standing water. It’s downpours, purges, falls, trickles. We try to live such linear lives, time – one second after the other. The list of things to do in a day – one check after the other. We forget nature doesn’t always work like that. Seasons yes, but inside seasons are currents we can only see when the leaves are circling on the ground, the trees.


Comments

2 responses to “Ebbs”

  1. The whole notion of linear is, I suspect, a construct, designed and projected to keep most of us off-balance. Why would something as essential as poetry be separate from, different than nature. Fortunately for those of us who feel called to put words together, the writing season is not limited to a few months but it has its cycles/our cycles. We show up and hope the snapping turtle is feeling sluggish today. xo

    1. rachvb Avatar
      rachvb

      I remember having this conversation about time and our perceptions of linear time. The thought has popped up again; the realization that time is not as linear as we think it is. It’s hard to retrain yourself and your mind and your body to not push for such linear results – especially in poetry and nature. And to be calm in such a cycle – that I think is the key. Knowing and trusting that another flow will come. It seems to be the hardest thing for me to stay calm in.
      And yes, here’s hope the turtle ate too much mud.
      xoxo

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