Stalking or Collecting and Collating Words?

Desire does not bring poems. The hunted can only abide how opportune the killer's lunge is and how deftly sharpened its blade.

                    

- Ricardo Pau-Llosa





Poet, Ricardo Pau-Llosa, writes of the inspirational moment as a "hunger of the stalking mind." He feels creativity requires a hunt for the moment it cannot grasp, let alone pity.

What obsesses a writer in the moment that jars from the onslaught of every day thoughts and feelings? Can we hunt for topics or stalk them until they relent? Will they behave if trapped or captured this way?

I do not become a stalker of experience. Ready for gleams that beckon, my notions might not connect immediately. As a result, I feel more like the collector and collator of their sparkle rather tracking them like a hunter. I save experience, surprise wonder in a kaleidoscope to twist, turn and view the assimilation of color and shine. Eventually a series of clicks shift and sort for me.

A series of gleams arrive and dovetail or flee. Why? They relish the freedom of flight.

I keep a notebook with me and record the flashes so later I can spin through pages and observe what will shift into perspective. Shine with silly.

Pau-Llosa likes to use parables as metaphors in his poems. I've discovered the idea of a myth provides potential.

This poem resulted from such a series of gleams that reflected and refracted at a later date.



Spanish Pomegranate

The Alhambra, red fortress, spreads on a hill,
a sleeping lion waiting beyond the years
layered by conquerors and inhabitants.
In a corner, pricks of stars focus light
where Washington Irving spun his stories.
Where women wept and men plannedconquests,
birds swirled, leaving shadows behind. Visions
slipped into the pools, then vanished.

Behind harem doors, a woman sang her bondage,
sought freedome with each breath. She wandered
rooms, leaving her scent in clove and jasmine.
One day of a different wind, she tied her soul
to a swallow. They flew to a grove in Jaen
So far from fear that once her feet touched,
she blended with the earth. Her blood flows
through pomegranate flowers each spring.

                                        Avocet, winter, 2010.

Create Write: Go through your journal or notebook for words that gleam. Will a poem result? Try writing a myth or parable.



. - Richardo Pau-Llosa