Reticent

It's a word that well describes my sentiment as I sit down with my laptop to take up the task of writing again. I haven't written a single poem since mid-August, and before that it was mid-July. It's been so long since I've attempted to write everyday. There was a time when I couldn't help myself, and I lost sleep because there was so much to say.

I know there are at least as many beautiful things around me now as there were 3 years ago, when I wrote nearly constantly, sometimes driving down the road (usually I pulled over). Something about being, by and large, content seems to dull the edge of urgency--it's easier to put off sharing my mind when desperation is not licking at my heels.

I find, though, that when I don't write, over time, the things I would've said in the span of days or weeks back up in my mind, and I come to the point where there's too much to say and not enough words, or drafting-board space in my mind, to organize it and say it well.

This brings me to my word for the day: Reticent. I want to write. I want to share what I have to say, but I have no idea where to begin. So I'll begin with today. And maybe tomorrow will be easier.

reticent

5 October 2009

This season is fraught with dangers,

cliches I must attempt to navigate

over, around, beneath to find something

more meaningful than turning leaves,

pumpkins and hot, mulled wine.

I despair of avoiding the trip-up

and turn my face upward, breathe

the full, crisp air, wonder at the perfect

cut-outs against an o-dark-thirty sky

as I walk beneath a maple

reticent to change her green.