Dis-cov-er-ing
I’m discovering the writer,
the one who wakes early to read again
the paragraphs from the day before,
to see what’s gone missing,
to learn if the spirits still live in those lassoed symbols,
those syllabled sounds.
I’m discovering the writer,
the one who sees a poem in the soapy water
and the way tires sound on the street when it rains,
the one who stops to write a title on a post-it note: “Seeing Things.”
I am discovering the writer,
the one who’s been there from the beginning,
born of elders, of sermons, of parents who kept to themselves
the questions they had about the state of the world
and who must have funneled the longing for expression
into the child who picked up a pencil one miserable day and
then felt better for it.
I’m discovering the writer,
the one who learned the DIY of adding one word to the next
to say what was there to see
without stumbling on fill-in-the-blanks
or dozing in a field of cliches,
the one who can stay on topic for years,
who can multiply the jigsawed pieces
in the narrator
who is becoming me.
