I've been picking away all week at the minutiae of three different poem drafts, and then last night I went out to the salon and a new poem tore into life . . . maybe not completely finished, but I think essentially so--a ten-minute response to a prompt that asked us to make an idea/color/abstraction concrete. We each wrote a couple of such words on cards, then chose another person's card from the bowl, and I ended up with passion. The timer was set, and the poem exploded.

Such moments are cathartic, especially after a week spent dryly playing with spaces and line breaks, and I came home feeling as if I'd run a race against myself and won.

So this morning, after my exercise session, I'll transcribe the blurt and figure out whether what I felt is real. I've got other desk work to do today, and housework and laundry and gardening and all of the regular tasks, but first to the poem, first to this surprise that I was desperately waiting for.