Here is an untitled poem I wrote in 2012. It was written in sonnet form for a creative writing class.
My
son carefully reaches for his bricks
knocking
yesterday’s creation to the floor.
Then
stops mid-crawl with wide eyes and inspects
a
tiny speck of dirt beside the door.
Outside
he sits quite still so he can stare
at
tree-shapes and the wobbling washing line
with
pegged white sheets that billow in the air.
Then
he lifts up his arms because he can.
I
learn from him that stillness between action
is
what we need to grow. He’s offering
a
gift; each moment is an invitation
to
see how ordinary things can sing.
Remembering
his eyes I see it now:
Those
sheets were ship’s white sails, the lawn its bow.
At the time I was focussed on it as a technical exercise and managed to keep to a strict rhyme scheme and metre. Rereading it recently I thought it worked as a technical exercise but that the word choices were sometimes imprecise and some lines were clunky. So I rewrote it and gave it a title.
Shared
Attention
My
son crawls past his painted wooden bricks,
Knocks
yesterday’s creation to the floor,
Then
stoops his head with wide eyes and inspects
A
tiny speck of dirt beside the door.
Now
in the garden, motionless, we stare
At
tree-shapes and the bobbing washing line.
His
eyes dart up at two crows’ soundless flight
As
pegged sheets swell and shudder in the air.
I
learn from him that stillness between action
Is
what we need to grow; and noticing
The
world together is an invitation
To
see how ordinary things can sing.
Remembering
that day I see it now:
Those
sheets were ship’s white sails, the lawn its bow.
Rewriting it, still within the sonnet conventions, felt like a really tricky jigsaw puzzle. I knew how much space I had to express each idea, but some words had to be more specific and certain sentence structures needed to change. Stanza 2 took the most work. I took out the last line, inserted a new image about the 'soundless crows' which I had found in my original notes for the poem, and swapped the lines which slightly altered the rhyme scheme. I also wanted the lines in stanza 3 to run more smoothly and removed the words 'gift' and 'offering' which I felt were a bit too sentimental. I am happy with the result, but who knows, maybe in three years I'll feel the need to do a third rewrite!