The Beginning of the Beginning of DEAR WANDERING WILDEBEEST

Hello, and happy Poetry Friday! Your host for Roundup is Jone at Check it Out. Also, I'm thrilled and honored to read lovely Jama post about DEAR WANDERING WILDEBEEST at Jama's Alphabet Soup. Thank you, Jama!

We writers are often asked about beginnings: where did you get the idea? what inspired this book? where do ideas come from?

I'm sure there are gazillions of answers, and all of them exactly right. Even though in my experience it's impossible to really pinpoint a beginning... so much of the creative life exists in our subconscious, and it's developing our whole lives long. Which means I could say, DEAR WANDERING WILDEBEEST was inspired by my childhood love of animals or the time our family lived and traveled overseas. (The closest we got to the Serengeti was Egypt.) Maybe there were books I read or movies I saw -- I'm certain their were. But THE thing that pushed me headlong into the water hole was this photograph (and others) by Greg du Toit:

Only it wasn't just the image: it was the amazing story behind the image. I wrote about this a few weeks ago at Poetry for Children and just now saw the lovely comments many of you left. A belated THANK YOU!

I find I am often inspired by other art, whether it be written works or visual art or music or history or science or nature... no shortage of inspiration in this beautiful world, that's for sure! And I am continually inspired by the offering here on Poetry Friday.

Beginnings, essentially, are about listening. Listening to the world. Listening to your response to the world, that soft inner voice that begs you to coax it from the darkness.

So, today, I'd like to share a beautiful poem about beginnings:

Beginning

The moon drops one or two feathers into the field.   

The dark wheat listens.

Be still.

Now.

There they are, the moon's young, trying

Their wings.

Between trees, a slender woman lifts up the lovely shadow

Of her face, and now she steps into the air, now she is gone

Wholly, into the air.

I stand alone by an elder tree, I do not dare breathe

Or move.

I listen.

The wheat leans back toward its own darkness,

And I lean toward mine.

- James Wright

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Don't you love that?? I like thinking of ideas as "the moon's young, trying/ Their wings." Wishing all of you wonderful beginnings today! xo