Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Pressing It (Poem)

Pressing It

Impress your print deep
in the grit and feel

the surface heat grow
cold, the walls pulling

up and firming, holding
the image you want

to make as you tamp,
your feet in place. Solid,

you think. But what once was
rock is loosed, the fragments

so fine from their wearing
down they must stick

together to be something
more. Stand there as long

as you will. When you step
away, experience the rush

of the water coming to you,
filling in the place you've been.

© 2011 Maureen E. Doallas
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I'm participating in the #Trust30 challenge, an online writing/reflection initiative for which a prompt is posted daily. All of the prompts to date are here.

This poem is my response to the 16th prompt from professional "life-shifter" Bridget Pilloud whose Portland, Oregon, company is Intuitive Bridge:

When good is near you, when you life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall not discern the foot-prints of any other; you shall not see the face of man; you shall not hear any name; — the way, the thought, the good, shall be wholly strange and new. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Can you remember a moment in your life when you had life in yourself and it was wholly strange and new? Can you remember the moment when you stopped walking a path of someone else, and started cutting your own?

Write about that moment. And if you haven't experienced it yet, let the miracle play out in your mind's eye and write about that moment in your future.

* * *

You'll find my response to prompt 15, a poem titled "Truth Be Told", and a link list of my responses to prompts 1-14 here. All of my responses are poems.

3 comments:

Laura said...

I love that last line. I remember making stepping stones with the kids at church and how frustrated I was when they pressed their hands into the wet cement to leave their prints. The impression filled up with water as the weight of them pressed down upon the wet. Life is like that--the filling in, the edging out.

Lovely, as usual, Maureen.

S. Etole said...

that last line caught my attention, too ...

lynne said...

Reading through some of your #Trust30 responses.

This one I love.