Monday Poem: How to Begin

[Every Monday (until I run out of them), I’m posting a poem of mine that has fallen out from the submission process for some reason. In most cases, it will be one where I’ve received no response to my submission for at well over a year or more. Maybe the magazine I submitted them to has folded, the submission was lost in the post, or whatever. So, these poems can be seen as lost, orphans, of uncertain status, or something like that.]

These poems are also posted to ABCTales.

How to Begin

There are ways of beginning.

Take a handful of nothing

and breathe a living breath

all over it, as you shape

and create a new meaning.

There are ways of beginning.

Take her hand in yours and walk

slowly through your young lives

along the beaches and dark streets

creating a new meaning.

There are ways of beginning.

Take a paintbrush in your hand

and all the colours of a lifetime

across bare paper or canvas

to create a new meaning.

There are ways of beginning.

Put your hand on her stomach

and feel the kicking moment

take hold of its own life

to create a new meaning.

There are ways of beginning.

Take a handful of these words

and scatter them across the page

to turn a story into living

and create a new meaning.

There are ways of beginning.

Take a small hand in yours

then crouch down to see

how big this strange world can seem

as it creates a new meaning.

There are ways of beginning.

shape a note from silence

and let it fly on the open air

to echo around this stillness

while it creates a new meaning.

There are ways of beginning.

pause at the school gates

as your child walks on, away,

not looking back, but forward

to creating her own new meaning.