Working Backwards

In today's wanderings I came across a post at Rauan Klassnik's blog where he shares from his journal the grackle's effect on him. He writes:

"I am in some of my best moments this blackbird. It sings in me ruthlessly. It rules my love. Sits on my blood. And rides it hard. Swallows the stars. And smashes the moon to bits. It rolls in churches. And governments. It doesn't want to die. But it doesn't even bother to think about it."

How excellent is that? Love it. The grackle is an interesting totem. Google it.

From Rauan's blog I wandered to Reb Livingston's new blog via her old blog and found an interesting post on dreams as poetry's origin. She writes:

"People dream differently, but the psyche is communicating to your conscious part, using symbols, signs, images, metaphors, language, triggers, cues, etc. intended for YOU to hear/see/feel and understand. Your dreams aren't failing you, you're not paying close enough attention. Pay better attention, you'll get more useful dreams. Or at least they'll seem more useful because you're paying attention."

Interesting. So then I went to smoke a cigarette, and while I was standing in the back door smoking and staring at nothing, I remembered a poem I've been twiddling with this week. Here it is:


Lost

Our story gets lost
past the wheat fields,
past the pines,
past miles and miles
of dirt roads and ditches
to a creek that winds
into a cavern to merge
with the darkness
beneath our bed.

In our dreams,
where anything
is possible,
nothing happens.

There is beauty there.