During late March and early April of 2000, I spent a month writing and tweaking a single poem. That was the first time I spent more than a day or two on any one poem. Usually they come to me nearly complete, almost like automatic writing. I think that�s because I had been thinking hard about a certain theme and a phrase or two will attach itself it and won�t leave me alone. Somewhat like a phrase of music that keeps playing in your head for hours after you listened to the song. Then over the next several days or weeks or months that phrase starts to collect images, emotions, words and phrases that expand on the theme until something swells inside me and I feel like it will pop if I don�t start writing.

But this time it was different. This was also the first time I had composed a poem entirely via keyboard on the computer, watching the words flow across the screen. I wrote the first two lines for no reason except I needed two short lines to experiment with centering a poem on a page in the word processor. I was on the phone with my Dad who needed my help to figure out how to do this for a poem my Mom had written for her brother�s birthday card. I needed to go through the motions to be able to explain the steps to him. When we finished, I walked away from the computer, leaving that unsaved document sitting there. It confronted me when I came back later that night to do my journal and I started to kill the document but something stopped me. Those lines had been meaningless as I manipulated them earlier but as I looked at them now they became loaded with meaning from the spiritual path I�d been on for several years by then. So I left the document alone. It sat there unsaved for several days before I added a couple more lines. I didn�t save it until I had six or seven lines. And only then because it had started to matter to me enough that the specter of a loss of power or one of my cats stepping on the keyboard began to haunt me. It was for want of a viable title that I had not saved before. I hated to lock myself into a title too early and it bugged me for some reason to create files with throw away names. But I did that time and have many times since. (I learned the magic of renaming files in the computer�s file management window)

Anyway, I finally did save unfinished poem but I did not close the file. I had no idea where it was going. Which was unnerving for me as usually the last line of a poem is among the first phrases I write down. I didn�t find out where I was going this time until I got there and recognized it as the Truth my Self was trying to tell me. This was the first of my poems to tell a plotted story. It taught me to trust the process and expect a miracle and to show that trust and confidence by starting something even if I don�t know where it is going. I�m planning to try that on a short story or novel now. It is that perfectionist�s need to know exactly what a thing is going to look like, be like, work like before I take the first step toward the goal which has caused most of my projects to fizzle in the planning stage. Not just writing projects either.

Now that I�ve teased you with all of that, here it is:

Becoming (That Most Hoped for) I

The most I can Hope for is a beaching on Wisdom�s coast, to breach-birth this folded foal on the shoals of shame and let the surging surf scour it�s bloody hide, lift it to the Light and toss it as Peace Offering on the shores of Life. Where wind- slapped it will escape onto the plains of Faith and flockless, wander desolate fields, conspiring with breezes to name my pains and claim my blame, and on the balance of Love�s Justice weigh my Spirit�s fruits to recompense unto me the heart of my soul�s intent Then I, now Accepted by the Beloved One into the blessed Ground of Being, am freed to scale the pinnacles of Becoming. There to sing the Wonder and Glory and Awesome Joy of I AM THAT.