The "sound" of a waterfall-Eagle Crest Trail, Columbia River Gorge, July 4, 2016
As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I have several avenues that offer inspiration for my poetry. Prompts presented through the Portland Women Writers workshops offer of lots of juicy jumping off points for my imagination. As part of my promise to myself, I have been coming home and writing up and refining at least one piece from each workshop. I have also started going back over older journals and typing up my raw entries to get my work on the computer. Between my more reflective blog posts (I’m in the midst of working on one now) I’ll be posting new poems to the website. The poem I'm adding today is titled Sound Gift. The prompt was to write about a sound or combo of sounds. I took a few notes before starting the poem: The sound of one hand clapping/the sound of silence, the sound of nothing, longing for non-clutter of ear drums, no drumming, no strumming, what is silence to the profoundly deaf—is one profoundly wise? What gift is sound/ what gift is sound? before settling into the poem during an approximately 12 minute writing time. That first draft/inspiration was shaped and caressed as I later typed my tiny scrawled words into a Pages document, then later snipped and yanked, patted and listened to it until it was formed into what is offered today. It may change again at some time in the future. Poems have a way of doing that.
