eleven times out of twelve, what I write turns out to be something totally different than what I started with. I mean, there is much word-smithing with any poem, but most times- eleven days out of twelve- the subject matter changes completely as I scrounge the floor of my brain looking for connecting thoughts to make it sound logical, beautiful, or even nonsensical. This is funny enough – trying to make something sound like it doesn’t make sense – or even silly – by perusing dictionaries or thesauruses (or is it thesauri?). “The Sauri sought to seek the soar-fly.” – I’ll remember that for later- Rooting up old phrases, or trying to describe how old phrases get rooted up…digging and digging, poking at the word order. It is not unlike scavengers looking for food, hogs looking for truffles, squirrels looking for acorns. Most of the time, they know they are looking for food, but sometimes they happen upon other things. I’m not sure how a squirrel would react if it found a penny on the ground when it was looking for acorns. It probably wouldn’t be very useful to the squirrel (or the hog), and they would ignore it. The poet – particularly one who is looking into every detail- could easily be distracted by the penny in lieu of the acorn. Now this is not useful if one is seeking acorns, and squirrels don’t write poems, but most times, eleven times out of twelve, a better poem comes from the unexpected penny.

NaPoWriMo 2013 Day 28 (Catchup)