Move Forward Into Story – A Poem

I’m standing in front of a blank canvass.

It beckons me forward and I feel a tingling

in my fingertips as they itch for a wand

to channel creativity through.

I look down and expect to see

a brush dripping with paint

or a piece of charcoal smudging my fingers.

Instead, I see a pen gripped and ready.

Its vibrating slightly as if it already

knows what its going to write.

I place the pen on the canvass,

as visual art is another way to

tell a story, to catch a moment in time

standing still so that we can

observe its beauty. When the pen

touches the canvass, I watch as

lines of ink flow out from the tip

of the pen. These lines swirl across

across the canvass and shape themselves

into a form that is taken from my memory.

The lines begin to move so the whole

picture looks as if it is real.

I see a boy sitting with a journal in hand,

clutching a pen much as I am now.

He begins scratching the paper with

his pen, making words along the page.

I watch as the worlds he’s creating

come to life in front of his eyes

and the wonder he feels as being able

to harness this magic. It takes me a moment

to realize that the boy is me, that this

was the moment I first put pen to paper.

I move my own pen along the canvass

and the lines move and shift once more.

As the lines begin to twist into shape,

I see a young man, holding a book he

wrote for the very first time, holding his words

as if the book were a child. The young man

turns his face and I see myself.

I look more closely at the canvass

and see the title of my first book,

the words that I had typed out

filled with their own special kind of magic.

The book itself is shining and, even through

the canvass, I can feel its pulsing heat.

I move my pen one final time,

watching as the lines shift and move

into a shape. I lean my face closer

to the canvass and see that the lines

are actually all made up of words and letters,

The lines of words shift and move

and there is the sound of bells in the air

as if something I cannot see is singing to me.

When the lines stop shifting, I am

looking at myself as I am now,

my holding a pen against a canvass that is

moving and changing as I look at it.

I almost take my pen away from the canvass

when the me on the canvass turns and gives me

a soft smile, as if it knows my momentary fear.

I keep the pen on the canvass and watch

as the lines shift once more. They become

a doorway. The door is situated in the midst

of a meadow. I can flowers in the grass

moving and shifting in the wind.

There is a tree in front of the door

and its branches also bend and shift,

almost as if welcoming me to enter,

beckoning me forward to the unknown.

Slowly, the doorway opens but I am

not afraid. I blink and then the doorway

is in front of me, the meadow around me.

I can hear the whisper of the wind

through the grass, hear the creak of the

tree as it continues to wave in the wind.

I hear the sound of bells again and

they sound like music. I know that

I have nothing to fear, that these

are my words that are surrounding me

and they mean me no harm. I step forward

through the door, knowing I can return

any time I want to. I may not know what

is on the other side of the door,

but the only thing I can do

is move forward into story.