When I have a need to write,
I go to the spring with my bucket.
There the limped waters wait silently for me,
enticing me, with a force I do not understand,
to pause before dipping my bucket,
oh so slowly, into the chilly pool at my feet.
The outside bottom rim meets the water
sending out ripples, which roll across the
pond’s surface, chasing each other,
even bouncing back from the bank,
to meet following swells, a sort of dance,
before fading, as we all must do one day.
I slowly lower my bucket into the pool
and as the top edge meets the waters level,
if my hand is steady,
the waters will be poised,
held there by surface tension –
just for a few moments of anticipation.
The meniscus tears and the first drops,
water-thoughts, tumble down the pail’s incline,
twisting and spreading across the curved slope
to collect at the bottom in a smile.
Then, just as I now write, the words flash
faster and faster my physical writing skill,
no match for this flow, degrades to a scrawl,
which later, will be difficult to decipher.
No matter, the words are down, they are mine.
The joy of being able to do this is incredible
for one, who, once crippled by spelling,
learnt to hate the exercise of writing.
How then this joy?
I do not understand but
I do know, as the bucket fills
faster than I can hope to write,
that now submerged it holds not just
its limited capacity but in fact
the whole limped pool of thoughts,
of words and punctuation.
Of sounds and rhythms.
Of joy and laughter
and of tears.
David Garlick, Sidney, November, 2001