We land at the Challenge's end, a
small miracle. We have each become a student
of daily habit, presented
for the first time or again with this writing place, theirs or ours, hers or his,
welcomed to the fold of a just so, chef-turned omelet.
It amazes us still how the
writing ritual itself becomes our instructor.
At a keyboard, we poked
until it
surrendered (or revealed) a slice. And
perhaps once, an idea shook
us so suddenly -- as a hitter who meets his
bat head
to a ball that he
didn't
even bother
to
size up, the abrupt taste
coming only from the unseeing instinct of it.
I sometimes know how he
feels, tipped
over with the swing's effort, putting his all into it,
into
the
blind hope that the result will be more than trash;
the payoff of essential optimism, not unlike an
unexpectedly delicious filling cached in an omelet.
Our simple writerly wants
might in fact distill to
a wish to be
vulnerably soft
when standing in
the
middle
of earthly bustle, pillowy
to
any and every experience, the
unthinkable alternative being to lose touch.
Source text for this golden shovel poem: Dirt by Bill Buford, page 130