Writing poetry slows me down.  Whatever the focus of the poem, or whatever the reason behind writing it, almost certainly it pulls on some important place inside of me.  Rendering it to words and then attending to those words like a puzzle: moving a word here, a word there, eliminating a word, adding a word, until i can look into it like a mirror, helps me move and shift those important pieces inside myself.

The first draft, which almost always fails to reflect the incredible amount of work that goes into it, has a sense, for a little that it is complete.  When I wrote this, I felt good enough about it to show it to two people.

Your Word is woven
living, active and sharper
like skeins of yarns colored
mantis green, stainless steel and scarlet
whipped side to side – hand to hand
between the splayed threads of our days
an activity too frenetic to reveal anything
like order, care, or love until –
the hands of the craftsman wrap
the blanket around the curve
of a back bent, selvedging
the edges of a grieving soul

And suddenly it is incomplete again.  Seeing it through different eyes makes it forever different and the suggested changes seem obvious and necessary.  So I place it before me and everything once again slows down and the rearranging of the puzzle resumes.  This time, the moves, pivots, eliminations and additions are bolder and cause fractions and force significant changes. There is frustration and the thing can fall completely apart.

Can a life be woven
shuttled side to side
hand to hand on a loom
with threads splayed taunt like days
in colors verdant, stainless steel
and scarlet?

Am I attentive
to the hands stained
distilling dyes from every life shade
mix-matched, rich and muted – or
the hands bloody – spinning
filament from smelted steel?

I am still so dull
to the kindness, the love – until
those hands lift
the finished garment and enfold
stooped shoulders of a weary one
wandered home – so surprised
to find myself
expected.

In truth there are many versions now.  I save them all so that I can see the shift.  I take the latest version on my walk and I begin to test a new possibility.  Liking the potential of it I cast the words into the rhythm of my walk to make sure I can put it on paper when I return.

Woven
in colors verdant,
stainless steel and scarlet,
by hands shuttling fibers
side to side to side
wrapping indistinguishable
patterns on taut threads
splayed and shifting
like days upon days;

by hands stained
distilling dyes
from life shades
mix-matched
rich and muted and
by hands scarred
spinning filament from
smelted steel.

Too dim to see
this kindness, this love until
those hands lift it finished
from the loom, supple, pleasing,
and enfold a weary one
wandered home – so surprised
to find myself
expected.

And now I await some response from those original sounding boards about the most recent change – this time really hoping it speaks clearly to them too, but more confident that this is the way I’d like to keep it.  But maybe a poem is never really finished.