Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Ideas

Over the last two days, I've found two old poems I'd written on scraps of paper and stashed away in books. For me, this is like finding money hidden in the pocket of a coat I haven't worn in months. Naturally I'm a fan of my own writing, but after having forgotten about a poem, I can look back and read it with fascination, as if it was someone else's, and be amazed how good it is. Sometimes this is most true for the unrefined scraps, as the raw power of the moment of writing still lingers. It's kind of fun.

Here's the more comprehensible of the two (the other, so out of my usual style I am amazed that it was I who wrote it, is so surreal it hardly makes sense, yet somehow I like it). Not claiming anything amazing here, but anyways, here ya go.

Ideas
return is the movement of the Tao ~ TTC40

Sitting by the Great Sea,
one cannot help
but to think,

for ideas roll in like the waves,
inexorable, inevitable,
throwing light
from their curled surfaces.

But that clear element
does not remain, but rolls
back into the depths
from which it came,

leaving little more
than damp sand
and maybe some remnant foam.

2 comments:

  1. Were you actually sitting by the sea when you wrote this, or just thinking about it? Either way I like it.

    I'm thinking that probably the best stuff I've ever written was first composed on paper, and transcribed later to the computer with only minimal editing. I haven't done that for awhile, been composing directly on screen, only because I type so much faster than I write, but I'm thinking I'm going to go back to the old pen and paper way for awhile...it's slower, but in slowing down I think there tends to be more mindfulness to the tangible present, with less abstraction, and much clearer and deeper insight as a result.

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  2. Thank you. I admit it was a lake, but water is water, it's all one.

    I agree 100% with what you said about computer vs paper, I'm the exact same.

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