With poetry, inspiration often comes from small, unexpected sources. And ironically, it often comes when you are actively engaged in doing nothing, which speaks to the wisdom of leaving the race to the rats, the type personalities to the A’s, and the technology to the phone addicts.
Exhibit A: Last summer, while lying on a dock floating on a Maine lake, I simply stared over the edge, down into the water. That was my occupation for an hour or maybe more, who knows? Deadlines were dead, after all, as was the urge to check any messages or address any “Honey-do” lists. My partner in crime? The sun–lovely and warm on my back.
Soon I saw floating some six feet away a moth stuck to the still surface. It fluttered its wings, but wings on water are ineffectual. Instead, the moth became the epicenter of a small drama, sending an almost imperceptible ring of ripples to broadcast its final story. Only who would hear this story, I wondered?
This moment of “doing nothing” became the mortar and brick of something. Something called a poem, haiku-like in its brevity as nature poems often are. It appears in part two (“Second Search”) of my current book, Lost Sherpa of Happiness.
In our ways, we are all moths excited by the light of life. Some days we are down–stuck to a lake surface–but escape. And one day, we will not. But that is as it should be, because life’s great affinity is the circle, which figures prominently (in its quiet way) here:
Another Calling by Ken Craft
A moth, heavy
with water-
wounded
wings, fluttering
on the lake
as if the surface
were hot.
It sends
circular sonar,
saintly halos
of life
to the distant
bass of its
deliverance.
© Ken Craft, Lost Sherpa of Happiness, 2018 Kelsay Books