I used to write poetry while my mom bowled. The voices and banging, clashing, and crashing of weighted balls striking the lane to roll and hit pins sending them bouncing off their walls were a dim sound to me. I was lost in paper and pen. Never heard people calling to me. Didn’t sense them sitting beside me or reading over my shoulder.
Now?
There’s quiet in the room. The concentration and free thought I had thirty-five years ago is all but gone. I wouldn’t call it a struggle to pull the words up, but it is a battle to become lost in them.
I’m not even sure if I have the ability to be a poet anymore. The ease is gone. What was my first love doesn’t seem to be a part of me anymore and yet I refuse to let it go. Writing right now, typing, I’ve closed my eyes just to see the words and have them come out. Closing one sense to perhaps free the mind and how I used to write.
I’ve lost the concentration, had to open my eyes. I allowed a conversation from the living room to invade my brain.
Invade.
Poetry always felt as if it was the dreamer, the “out there” personality. I’ve accused my teen of having her mind all over the place, not concentrating on getting “stuff” done around her. Yet, she can write as fast and as much as I used to at her age. Much more in any given hour than I can now.
Maybe concentration isn’t something you just learn with growing up, but it’s what you lose as a creative person if you let reality in a little too much.
Think I’m going to have a talk with my dreamer and tell reality-self to take a small hike…or nap.