WRITING 101

The page is blank. 

Right to the edges. 

Staring back at you.

Eyes wide open. 

No margins. No rules.

Anything goes!

Then something comes, 

some meek little thought enters stage left. 

Tiptoes in. Outside the spotlight’s full moon.

It scoots into a rare vacant parking space 

in your brain. 

At the moment it appears trivial. Trifling. 

But wait. Don’t hit the delete button just yet. 

It may become the keystone. 

The cornerstone. A gemstone. 

May be your best move on the board. 

Then again, something huge, cometary, 

may come crashing into your consciousness. 

A simply fabulous something that, like a let-go balloon,

is just as likely to fizzle into a fallow nothing. 

You just can’t tell yet. Too early in the game. 

At first, you sweat to get something, 

anything, down on paper. Publish or perish!

But then you get to play connect--the--dots.

You watch which way it flows. Where it wobbles.

Never mind the ubiquitous honk of interruptions. 

You just keep building…building…building.  

A rhyme here. A reason there. 

Before you know it, you’ve moved to final edit.

You’re crossing your T’s. Dotting your I’s. 

The once-blank page is full. Overflowing!

Jewels and gibberish. Meaning and mumbo. 

But it’s yours. And it’s finished!

Sounds like writing a poem, I know. 

But really, it’s about writing your day.