A Dance in the Night

Yeah!  The new issue of Sibella Poetry Magazine is out (click on the link, or go to http://clck.com/jmmg/spoetry/APRMAYSIB13.pdf), and in it is my poem "A Dance in the Night". 

Some colleagues and friends have asked me, "when do you find time to write?"  or, "when do you write?"  You may think that as a writer, I'd be writing all the time, or at least every chance I got, but I don't.  I find that my best writing occurs when the mood strikes me, or when I have a vision of what I should write about.  Sometimes I ask for inspiration, and sometimes it just comes out of the blue...or someone will say something or do something that strikes a cord and out flows a verse or two that I can work with.  It's very sporadic, but it works for me.  The finished product is always something I feel.  "A Dance in the Night" came as a vision as I was sitting at my desk, just days before the submission deadline, staring out my loft window into the trees below...they spoke to me.  Ok, they weren't pines, but they were tall.  And we don't have wolves, but we do have coyotes who wander by occassionally :)  I followed this poem up with a post on my Ridgeview blog about the vision I had for Ridgeview.  Check that out too when you get a chance.  Enjoy ♡

 

A Dance in the Night

(©Linda Spencer, 2013)

By the light of the moon, I dance.

The night is quiet and the air is calm;
There is peace.
I stop at the edge of the forest
Where the tall pines stand guard;
A low branch bows, inviting me to enter.

As I cross the threshold, a lone wolf howls,
Eerily piercing the night silence.
She crosses my path a distance ahead,
Glancing to acknowledge my presence
And I hers; we are friends -
Creatures of the same Maker.

She lets me pass to continue my dance

Watching me and I her, in awe.
And I listen for her words.
But they do not come, not this time.
I hear instead the stillness of the night -
The sound of water; the rustle and creek of the woods.

Their message is clear:
I may own this land, but it is not mine.
It found me, and entrusted me as its keeper –
To protect it, to nourish it, to help it grow.
In return, it cradles me, and gives me life;
And gives me space to dance and play within it.

“We have been given a world of creation to laugh and dance and play with – it only asks that we treat it as we would our soul.”~Linda Spencer