Scribble, scribble, scratch

I went through three pencils and two sheets of paper trying to write a poem tonight. I'm the first to say that anyone can write at anytime, you just have to try...but I will concede that there are writing moods.

Sometimes I will feel this overwhelming desire to write something specific. Tonight it was poetry. I was in my bedroom hanging up my laundry to dry and I just felt like writing a poem. I tried to resist, after all, there was wet laundry in my immediate field of vision. I tried to focus on hangers and hemlines and making sure that nothing was dripping on anything important. Yet my mind refused to cooperate and began to enlist my body into its evil schemes. My arms felt heavier each time I tried to lift a hanger. My body longed to lay across the bed with a notepad. Even my eyes kept diverting from laundry and searching out the stack of pencils on top of a nearby sketchbook. It was like my entire being was calling out to write this poem. Even the first line popped into my brain and out of my mouth. "Such a tiny thing am I."

That was the final nail in my coffin. I shoved the wet clothes into the basket and scrambled for the pencils, flipping to a page in the sketchbook and started writing. But after that first sentence was down...nothing seemed to work. The rest of the poem was missing. Oh, I tried to write it of course. I tried different rhyme schemes, different comparisons; I even tried singing a bit to see if it sounded better as lyrics. I couldn't find anything that worked. So I stepped away, hoping that giving it a bit of a breather would help me find the rest of the words. I still felt that pull, that urge to write and I knew that it wasn't finished yet.

I finished the laundry. I made my bed. I fussed and flitted around my bedroom trying to waste time until inspiration struck. I knew that if I went back to the page now I would just end up scribbling and scratching more broken words and never finish the poem. Finally, I could think of nothing else to do. I grabbed a fresh notebook and leaned against the edge of my bed, copying down that first sentence. "Such a tiny thing am I." As I went to set my pencil down to write something else, I realized something.

It was finished. That was everything I was supposed to write. Just that one sentence. The urge to write had left in a rush and left me looking at these six words. I have to admit, I'm confused. Is just a really short poem? Is it the beginning of something I'm not supposed to finish now? Is it a message from God? Is it just me being nutty?

Such a tiny thing am I. I'm not sure what it means, but it's something to ponder tonight.