insistent blessings

i set out with eagerness and swagger,
my stride lively,

sure as can be that in my hands
i hold the nascent heart of a poem

only to stumble with blinding speed
headlong into a pricker thicket. 

i fight
wrangle
resist
complain
wrestle
struggle
lash out
whine
oppose
defy
throw punches
and cry.

until i don’t.

drained and outmatched, i become still:
lower my shoulders

loosen my arms
unclench my hands.

i inch myself out of the tangle into a clearing,
roughed up, humbled, curious,

and grateful—grateful for the sting
of punctures and scratches on my skin,

for landing beyond what i thought i knew,
for my poem idea now broken open

on the ground

—dotty seiter

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Notes about poem and art:
• So much to learn when writing a poem. So much. I’m thriving on the learning, enlivened by the creative process. For fun, I’m enumerating here a bunch of words that ended up on the cutting floor when I worked on “insistent blessings”: allow, belligerent, conviction, deflection, discomfort, embracing, essential, flow, form, intention, invitation, joy, obstruction, portal, push, receptive, release, slack, slams, shove, surprised, terrain, unfamiliar, unknown. Into the recycling bin they went!
• Humbled and Curious is another water-and-ink investigation. So much to learn every which way I turn!