I'd actually been waiting for another friend to come home so we could go running -- by now it is almost 10:00, the perfect time for a run -- so maybe I hadn't really thought through the ice-cream . . .
I was saved when she proposed a movie instead.
Have you ever watched "The Dead Poet's Society"? If you haven't, cancel your plans for the day and watch it. Maybe it's because I'm an English major, but I got chills and goosebumps and little warm fuzzies. Okay, so maybe some of the warm fuzzies came from the chocolate my friend brought over to share, but seriously, it's a great movie.
Afterwards, I wanted to try writing a poem like the one Todd creates in the movie - literally a spattering of the first thoughts that come to mind, continuing down the various paths of a frayed piece of yarn until they magically wind themselves up and come together. Often the poem knows where it wants to go before you can direct it there, so quit racking your brain for Shakespearean couplets. Quit studying a topic until your passion has burnt out beneath the heavy air of eloquence. Quit looking to reason and logic. Look in your heart, and write.
Well, here's my first attempt. Can't say it's flawless, but beauty never was.
I want to write something more beautiful
More beautiful than the way the praying mantis
Strokes a lotus flower
As he bequeaths his prayers to the wind
On which the birds fly forth like a hurricane
That whispers sweet destruction
As it turns the malting leaves
In slow and wistful swirls
Circling back again and again like time
In it’s perfect clockwork
Counting the moments that seconds can’t measure
That dreams can’t encompass
And hearts can hardly hold
That fingers cannot type
And lips cannot impart
Because they are so ordinary
That eloquence and ornaments are gods
That sit aloft and mean to my heart nothing
Candidly,
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