Ars Poetica

Each day begins with faith
that word will follow word.
This is my ars poetica,
my house I build
stick by stick
and stone by stone,
my soul space between my hands,
my dreams
as harmonious as a white moon
rising imperturbly
through the night.

Crack me open.
Seeds spill out
from heart and bone.
They float and dance,
a mystery, a joy.
As I write, the very pulse
of the mountain shimmers through me.
I can see into the eye of a spawning salmon.
For a moment, the shape of an aurancara tree
is fixed, its bristling branches spread out
in two directions, to the earth, sloping down,
and to the stars, curling up,
a poem.

This poem is posted in response to Poefusion 36, to explain what a poem should be, inspired by the magnificent Ars Poetica by Archibald MacLeish. Sunday Scribblings' prompt this week is simply ¨"follow." Some of you readers know that I'm traveling in South America. This last week has been a challenge for my laptop computer was stolen in a very small town in southern Peru, after a 17 hour busride. While I did have backups, I was shakey over the loss and very uncertain how I could write without a computer. I posted a query on Internet Writers Workshop, their Writing listserv, and cannot tell you how wonderful it was to hear from other writers and to have a solution that brought me back to the keyboard and writing in only 2 days. So part of this poem is a celebration simply of the ability to write.