Stolen Minutes

I write a lot about writing. It's not that I'm ... by any stretch of the imagination ... an expert on the subject. On the contrary, the process often baffles me.

Do we know all there is to know about love? Or Nature? Or God? No! But we pursue these, and other subjects, with a passion, because we want to understand.

So it is with the subject of writing.

I write wherever and whenever I can. Afterward, I don't always understand what I've written, or why I wrote it. But I write.

I keep a scratchpad beside the bed, a pen ... actually, a pen with a light in it ... just in case I wake up with some thought bugging me, something that will be lost if I don't write it down right away.

Sometimes, even that isn't enough to preserve it. My scrawled writing, coupled with the morning mental fog that follows a restless night, can be a tough code to crack.

Oh, well, there will be another time, another place, and maybe that same thought will pop up like a rabbit, go running across the clover field of my mind ... and maybe, just maybe, I'll grab it this time, tame it, make it mine, all mine.

But don't worry. I've learned to share. Oh, have I ever.

For example:

STOLEN MINUTES

I steal minutes when I can,

take them for my own use,

sometimes to sit thinking

my own odd-angled thoughts,

sometimes watching as a pencil

searches its way across

the untracked page, sometimes

listening to that voice,

imperceptible except to that

part of the ear that feels,

more than it hears, what is said.

©

1996

(originally published in The Christian Science Monitor)

***

Today's word:

imperceptible

Afterthoughts ... in response to your comments:

Oh, thank you, Rose! Honestly, though ... (blush-blush) I think I generally fall far short of your generous assessment ... still, you've given me an excellent sendoff toward that splendid weekend, and I wish you the same.

And I thank you, Indigo, for that insight ... I am often surprised ... often amazed ... and sometimes pleased by what appears on the page (or screen) before me. As for stolen minutes ... I feel that those times ... those minutes ... when I feel I should be jotting someting down, but don't ... well, I feel that I'm stealing from myself ... if I don't grab a pencil or pen and start scribbling.