So taken with the words was I that writing it down would not wait for the warmth of my room.

I found this random piece of my past today, with no clue when I wrote it. But I wanted to share it with you.

She doesn’t even know it, but I conceived of the poem that heralded my transition from prose to poetry one night as I walked back to my dorm, through a bitter cold, after an invigorating conversation…

So taken with the words was I that writing it down would not wait for the warmth of my room. With shivering hands and icy winds nipping at my cheeks, with the ink in my pen barely writing on the sheet of crumpled paper I’d found in my pocket, I wrote the words in my mind against the window. So inspired was I that unlocking the door and getting to sleep had to wait. This was a love poem of sorts:

Beauty is walking back across campus at night,
the clouds gray against the darkened faces of old buildings,
the trees bare against the whispering snow,
the lights like stars to my sleepy soul…

I know the lake is the woman,
the woman, the lake;

like skipping stones my words are these;
like reverent bones they pass away.