Since beginning this little space for writing, I have realized how much I want to communicate my understanding of a concept which I used as the title of this blog: draft and shadow. I wrote my first piece in a prose-y poem that really is not poetry. But something in me makes me break it into lines that look like a poem. It’s never satisfied me, so I’ve continued to roll it around in my head. Now I’ve written a second draft (draft! there it is again!), and I’m relatively certain that I’ll continue to think and hone and edit it into another form. But isn’t that writing? I don’t want this space to be about an attempt at perfection, but rather a confession of imperfection and an embracing of the process of writing. So here is Draft and Shadow II:

These words are draft and shadow,

only intimations of ideas beyond 

and outside of language.

I, too, am draft and shadow:

a breath, a vapor, a transient pilgrim

on her way home.

This world–but draft and shadow–

near riddle, if truth be told.

Nothing imperishable or solid,

all changeable and fleeting.

This universe:

An exquisite whiff of a greater beauty,

an inkling of mysteries unfathomable.

Imagination beats its tiny fists

trying to open the doors of that reality.

I am drawn by its draft.

I am sheltered in its shadow.