My Ideas Get Me (Journal 16)

Frequently schoolchildren ask me, “Where do you get your ideas from?”  The answer, which always puzzles them is, “I don't get my ideas, they get me.” ~Robertson Davies

Compelling a character to speak or a story to breathe is fraud; waiting for that first whispered word or that first miraculous escape of air takes patience.  I keep a journal of lines or phrases that speak to me and echo through the corridors of my mind.  Every once in a while, I'll take out that page to see if any of those lines or phrases have more to say.  Sometimes, more patience is required.  At other times, those lines and phrases begin pouring out their life stories.  One such line for me came one summer at camp.  I was looking out at the stillness of Lower Narrows Pond.  The trees on the shore were perfectly reflected in the calm blue waters, and here came the line, unbidden: “still waters steal the souls of trees.”  There was nothing more for some time.  Then came the summer three years later when my husband and I weathered a thunder storm at my family's camp on Sebago Lake.  That line came back to me out of the ether, and I struggled for a time until the rest of this poem finally came to fruition:

Tempest Tossed

still waters steal the souls of trees

holding them captive in unquiet depths

as turbulent as the liquid blue of your eyes

and mottled with mist

as Aeolus unleashes his minions

scattering clouds across the burgeoning dark of the sky

obscuring the pale sun with a rumbling crescendo

pure energy streaks, jagged and bright

electrifying grey-blue waters

with white-hot intensity

cold, cleansing showers pelt my flesh

I tremble as I stand beside you in the rain

here, on this shore,

where we once breathed alone