Riverhead of Words
For more than two decades, business goals and others’ needs provided a purpose for the words I wrote. I’ll admit that money also proved an effective source of motivation.
Now and then, I’d try to write for myself, prompted by feelings—sadness, loss, anxiety, love, fear, or because my head and heart were beginning to spill over with thoughts and feelings that had nowhere to go. I didn’t want to lose them. They’d been so internalized they were part of me. I feared losing myself. I almost did.
By the time it became necessary to move into my father’s home. He didn’t need me. I needed him. The words I’d internalized had formed a huge wall between my thoughts and feelings—like a clogged drain—a mass that backed up inside, almost choking me. I stopped forming words or thinking about them because I thought, “Where will I put them? Where will they go.” I thought I’d lost my ability to write.
My father and I live on a property that was once a wildlife refuge. There are still remnants of cages in the backwoods where I imagine birds of various types were sheltered—I picture, based on what bird and fowl I see around us now, that duck, geese, owl, hawk, heron, and turkey were brought to refuge here—to heal and gain strength as I have since I moved here.
I watch the turkeys.
The Tom, the hen, their babies
Seven, then the fox.
I watch the geese return each spring to have their babies, too. Then they fly north after teaching the young to fly. They stop by in the fall, honking to announce their arrival before landing on the pond. They stay a while winging their way south after thatch their babies. If the fox is active, the numbers might diminish. The younger ones disappear first. One spring, over the course of three days, the numbers went from 13 to five. It used to make me sad. Now I expect it. I use the parents as models. They move on. I have, too.
When words escape me or when I’m looking for just the right word, I walk around the property or stare out a window. No matter the weather. I study what I see. I don’t look at the big picture. I look for the details, the tiny things, and seek precision in words. Some I’ve stored up. Some just come to me at the moment. I’ve found that I see and hear nature's words. Then I write them down.
Nature, provider
Word prompter, phrase propeller
Riverhead of words
