Why I Write

I watch the cat out by the edge of the wild field of poppies. She sits and waits and watches with her whole body. Usually she'll catch a vole, or if she's lucky a mole. When she scents the prey she stiffens and quivers and leans into her hunt. Her ears taught, body firm, she has one hundred percent attention upon her quarry. To some this attention might be akin to love.

If a poet does not seduce a poem, s/he lives lonely.

I wait at the window's edge. I see the cat and her work and my own death scampering about in the tall grasses.

For a moment a breeze ruffles the green sea prairie. And I am floating upon this very page, crossing to an island full of voices in caves and eternal twilight forests. Then the moment passes. The winds fall back to calm earth. A still small whisper says: "Good. That is a beginning. Now wait. Soon enough, I'll be in your arms."

I write now because it's all I really can do as work that's worth much to me. I've prepared my whole life to create poems and colors for my field of earth. Everything I love has revolved around the blank page... solitude, Spirit, surprise that life ends and begins again, beauty everywhere.

I notice these things with my whole being.

I'm ready to begin falling into this page. I put the pen upon the paper. I wait, and then hear a rustle in the grasses. My whole body becomes alert.

RS

(c) Rick Sievers, August 2010.