Drought (and I Don't Just Mean the Weather)

     It is the first of August; 2012 is two-thirds gone. And I have written exactly two new poems so far this year. Two. This, from someone who, four years ago, wrote nine poems in August alone. Not that any or all of them were gems, mind you. I relegated most of them to my "reject" file, to be picked over some day in search of an odd phrase or two that might be salvaged. But at least I was creating.

     I've been through dry spells before, but nothing like this. Not only is my muse temporarily (one hopes) paralyzed; I haven't even been motivated to send anything out to editors. I haven't sent anything out in a year. My last poem in print came out this past April -- which was only four months ago, but it feels like fourteen.

     During another dry spell about two years ago, a friend of mine who writes the odd poem between raising her children and singing in the chorus at HGO, gave me a first line prompt to get me started on a new one. This was the result:

          DROUGHT

          Upon a jagged precipice, I stand
          poised, parched, a poet's heart in hand,
          beneath me, withered brook and furrowed land.

          There was a time not long ago, the grass
          swayed, surged, an undulating mass
          that fissured where the fleeter-footed passed.

          There was a time not long ago, I stood
          poised, plied, surrounded by its good,
          behind me, siskins singing in the wood.

         © Leticia Austria 2010. First published in Decanto.

     I might just ask my friend to toss me another prompt. Who knows, it might produce a decent poem and chip me out of this sand trap onto the green, or at least the fairway. "Oh, Kelley ... !"