I had talked myself out of writing stories, though it had been an elemental urge, one of childhood’s strong attractions.  I told myself I didn’t have any, didn’t have a voice. In truth I just didn’t know how to take on the monumental task of crafting fiction.  It was a poem that led me back.

The poem started with two lines that floated into my thought on a bicycle ride.  I worked on it later,  at home, at Carkeek Park, at home again, teasing out the images until a story emerged.  That poem later inspired a companion, and those two poems became the basis for my first attempt at writing a novel.  Though I have much to do to hone that craft, the joy it brings me keeps me at it.  So in a real way, this poem I wrote in the spring of 2009 has been my muse:

She slips between the curtains of the day

To walk the secret landscape wide away

Vistas lift along the rise of hills

Colors shifting on the lake

She slips between the curtains of your mind

Down your enshrouded corridor to find

You waiting by your quiet bulb

Her clasp is cool, her hands are slim

She leads you like a ripple in the wind

Light darts quickly, runs in sparkling lines

While water underneath it moves more slowly

Revealing glinting glimpses of the depth.

You follow, and you don’t know where you’re going

Your solar plexus full of light and air

The view too huge to paint, beyond all knowing

The touch too true to speak, too soft to bear

You feel a stab of desperate dependence

Aware her frame is far too light to lean on

Beyond your overwhelm, you seek transcendence

And something solid to believe on.

Don’t be afraid – she isn’t going to leave you

She’ll shine through you like light through water

You won’t need to live, create without her

She came to you because you thought her.

©Wendy Mulhern