BIG thanks to WestWard Quarterly for publishing Wait for the Rain.
Tag: Creativity
Thomas Edison Prays
I read somewhere
Thomas Edison had
a thinking bench
upstairs alone in
that room he
just sat and
thought and thought
and sat, sometimes
he would find
ideas and sometimes
they found him
because he was
waiting and not
really doing much
of anything, kind
of praying to
silence that something
would arrive and
if he sat
long enough and
was very quiet
something always did
Evening Prayer
I don’t pray every night, but I probably should. After baths, books, conversation with wife, I usually drift into writing, creating, rearranging words on a screen. Mind a whir, could journey depths until dawn, but the clock of calculation, of sanity, of sacred sleep, tells me to stop. I go into my daughter’s room, turn down her light, I love you, I say to her curled up slumber. I meditate in my son’s room, the sound of his breathing, my pew, my stained glass, my sanctuary. Seated, darkness, air in, carbon dioxide out, first minutes filled with brain bouncing from thought to thought, the earlier, the tomorrow, the could happen. Then sometimes the indescribable now, when I’m nowhere, everywhere, witness to all time, and no time at all. Emerge a short life span later, pray for my colleague, that her malignant tumor retreats, allows life, hers to continue. It feels like I could stay forever, talking to God, to no one, to everyone.
Writing in Bed
exhaling visible emotion
ink onto page
alive each night if
only for these moments
toes touch sheets happy
the hours before are done
no more plodding through city
streets in laced up leather
free naked now
words moving across the page
composition notebook
indenting with cursive letters
pressing down, scribbled lines
fragments of thought
searching for truth night after night
sometimes finding things
like an old Hot Wheels car in
the sandbox, pull it out
examine chipped paint
try to recall when it was lost
describe what it looks like
loose front tire, red Camaro
“this is it,” I think
to reclaim, touch memory
unearth myself, the buried parts
When I Stopped Blogging
No one reads what
I write anymore.
Used to race to paste
poems on the screen,
look at me, look at me,
my words for all to see.
Now these things just sit
floating above blue
machine made lines.
They hide here for my
delight, in a notebook
with secrets held tight.
William Faulkner’s House
I recently visited Rowan Oak in Oxford, Mississippi, where William Faulkner lived and wrote for over 40 years. My two favorite books by Faulkner are: Light in August and Absalom, Absalom!
Daniel W. Polk 