*Blog post originally written November 2, 2009 on an old blog.*
About a month ago on a warm and wet night while walking the dog, I wrote a poem. Here is the “finished” piece.
Rain splashes my skin
Night air breathes clean
Run, Legs, Run!
*
If Hunter were alive
They’d never catch us
Now, once upon a yesteryear, I thought that poetry was somehow sacred and couldn’t be edited. Now, I do believe that God can divinely inspire my writing or anyone else’s, but I’m not writing additions to the Bible, and I am aware that I sometimes get in my own way. That being said I have learned that changing things can almost always bring about improvements in any piece of writing.
I can’t share the “original” piece here because that was composed in my head while walking the dog, but here is what first tumbled onto paper.
The rain is falling gently
The night air smells so fresh
I want to run, run, run
Home to the hillside
If Hunter were still alive
They would never catch us
Then I began editing and rewriting and editing as I rewrote. I marked out “is falling” and wrote in “falls down.” I inserted a blank line before the last two lines. Then came the second version still editing as I wrote:
The rain falls^splashes down gently
The night air breathes clean
I want to run
Run
Run
to the hillside
*
If Hunter were still alive
troubles would never catch us
My biggest writing sin is wordiness. I talk too much. Say too much. Explain too much. I knew this version wasn’t really catching the moment correctly, but I went to bed. (Adequate rest is sometimes the best muse. Other times, sleeplessness, but considering three children need me to function each day, I use the adequate rest muse more often.)
While falling asleep I decided that I was definitely explaining too much with my “to the hillside” line. Only my readers that know me well enough to hear me talk about where I grew up would have any idea what I was talking about, and honestly, who cares where I want to run to? Again, very few people. That detail was better left for the imagination. Sometime between that night and the next morning, I also decided to change troubles back to they.
The next day, this spilled out onto the paper.
Rain splashes my skin
Night air breathes clean
Run, Legs, Run!
*
If Hunter were still alive
They’d never catch us
Then I spent the next couple of days looking for a decent picture of Hunter and enjoying memories of that dog. I did find a couple pics. I’ll try to get one scanned and posted sometime in the near future.
I left this poem alone for nearly a month and decided to share it tonight. Still editing as I typed I took out the word still in the second to last line for the “finished” product.
What do you do with your poems? Is every word sacred, or are you open to making changes?