Valerie Roney

One of the sticks I use to measure just how excellent I am being to myself is how often I compose in my head (and jot down!) little bits of poetry. Getting it together to actually post here as a Sohbet is A+ gold-star life management.

What poetry actually measures for me is life-saturation of moments of stillness, time with a bit of quiet in my head. If you’ve been following me on twitter or paying any attention here, you’ll know there hasn’t been much coming out of me creatively. This is probably the most stressed I’ve ever been in my life (six hundred fifty one bad sectors on my hard drive was just the capper – I’m thumb-typing this whole post on my phone – twitch).

I had a lovely moment of stillness last week – before the cold, wet Autumn weather hit. I got to sit by a pond, enjoy the amber leaves and smile at the duck feeding in front of me. For the first time in weeks a wee little haiku stirred in my brain, which I subsequently forgot as I didn’t write it down. It was grand too! When else do you get to use the phrase duck-butt in a haiku? A brilliant little composition about his back-end rippling out from the centre of his universe. Terribly witty and profound (at least I can claim as such without any actual evidence to contradict myself).

But alas! It is gone, dissipating back into the ethers it arose from. I did take this picture, so the moment’s not entirely lost. And I post it here now in the hopes it will inspire a haiku or poem from you (extra points for using “duck-butt”!)

So, just like that Wordless Sohbet a few Winters ago, let’s start a poetic conversation with an image rather than with words. I look forward to seeing where my moment takes you.