The Poem I Want to Read Every Morning
Let these words unburden your soul.
Mind a cyclone, legs too slow, my sneakers scraped the lopsided sidewalks on my rush to the writer’s group.
When I met the door and pressed my way into the studio’s warmth, my heart hammered at the sudden stop.
Even scooting a chair from the table and greeting the amicable faces failed to resolve the tension that stiffened my body.
All that changed when writer/artist Philip stood to read. Not a prompt, not yet—but words to loosen the morning’s too-tight corset, to ease our breathing and free our dreams to flow onto paper.
He didn’t explain it that way exactly. Said only that he’d share a brief piece to set the mood. I sat, distracted and skeptical that anything but a magic potion could deliver me tranquility.
He read from a handwritten page, his voice slow and catching for an instant at his scribbled revisions. My thoughts caught onto his words like a shirt on a thorn, one that forced me to pause and examine. An unusual calm compelled me to stay hooked.
When he finished, I broke the group’s appreciative murmurs to ask, awkward but determined, “Do you think I could take a photo of your poem? Just for myself — I’d like to read it every morning!”
