This began as a nature poem
bout cattails and pussy willows
those pearl grey fuzzy orbs
our Jake calls kitty toes
but then I lost the plot
increasingly common for me
well divergence as Frost says
paths not yet taken are poetry
Which brings me to winter
nodding to Robert's snowy night
not my prime time to pen on
being much too cold to write!
what's the point or am I
just pointlessly rambling along?
P'raps I'm on the road less taken
and I'm still writing words to my song
And there's the point: we're all
just making it up as we go
weaving tapestries out of fragments
not knowing what we know till we know
And yanno, as I write I think
I like it so much better this way
letting the verse go where it will
allowing the poem to have its say
Characters in my story do that
start writing on their own accord
butting in where I don't see them
and then demanding to be heard
Suddenly I'm not the author
he's taken over the show
I'm playing ghost writer to
a character I don't yet know
like lunatics seizing the asylum
who's not and who is in charge
If I'm the one who invented them
they've become remarkably large
Or maybe I'm the nut who
just thinks she controls the plot
maybe he's in my head composing
while this pen pusher is not
And then if it's real or made up
Am I the one with the choice
or am just a seance medium
an instrument giving them voice?
So who's the specter at the feast?
persona non grata perhaps is me
Banquo, the murdered killjoy?
my character real while I'm the story?
I'll break the fifth wall a moment to say that yes, disturbing, right? I'm wondering if that's why so many writers went mad (can you go mad? Is it a place on the map? not sure if that's the worst place to go?) Anyway. Such is our lot. And yes, I absolutely have had specter characters emerge out of nowhere and demand a bigger part. One of which was just starting to rear his head in my book "Heir Supply." before my computer caught a virus. Alas the tech guru pronounced the machine "toast." Sad because both books saved on it were viable for publication. And these books only exist in my head
And I'm not even sure "he" had a name yet. He was an itinerant odd job man. Who wrote himself a bigger role. And unfortunately American names from back then are all SOOO banal. Fred (yawn) George (yawn wider) Ben (cracks head open yawning too hard). I mean why can't we name like the Brits?? Roman names like Septimus! Or Saxon, Ethelred! So I will give our character a Bible name my husband recently referred to and which surprisingly, Bible scholar me had forgotten (never heard of, gasp, no forgotten) Elkanah.
How about that, Elkanah? What do you think?. (The author and audience await his nibs' approval). We could go with Ahasuerus?? I can't believe I'm kowtowing to a MADE UP person!! Funny how I've NOT forgotten as much of the book as you'd have thought I would being written mostly in 2010. 16 years ago!! Damn!!! I wish I had that file. Maybe it wasn't that good. But it was over 100 pages long with the gist of it in my head. Yes, even you Ekanah/Ahasuerus whoever you are. I'd have love sparring with you over the passages.
I probably won't go back to the poem because it's so difficult trying to rhyme. Seriously, you're very constrained. I would like to return to the marsh poem. I can see the place in my head-- Harbor Island in Grand Haven. Not so much a marsh now. Thank you Progress. Still, weeping willows ...
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