Each time some poem is ripe and I believe ‘ready’ in my head—and my heart heavy with it—a compulsion to deliver urges me to confront the blank sheet … but then, the slow pain of deliverance has to be gone through! Soon enough I realize, it’s a poem in the making and not really ready and complete in the head. The blank sheet stares back at me in defiance each time I sit to write a poem. My eyes are dazzled with the white of the sheet and I remain in a stupor wondering when, if any, words will flow from the fingers waiting on the keyboard.
The frozen whiteness has to melt into a warm throb of life … the black words forming lines, one nestling towards the other. Close, far, some lines further. The size and shape right. Just right for the lines to wriggle closer to the trigger … to take off for a fresh journey. Black upon white, not battling but negotiating difference and contrast. The space, in writing over it, gets sucked into the poem, becoming the content itself. Measured emptiness of space, getting ready to speak the language of the poem.
Life within life dancing on
Feather feet
The rising belly, a tight sponge
Puffed into lightness.