(DylanThomas: ‘In My Craft or Sullen Art’.)
Well yes, Dylan, mate, I suppose it is a labour. We can spend hours getting it all just right, or as right as we can (seldom quite perfect). Even more so than prose: not only every word needing to be the right one and in the right place, but every piece of punctuation – every blooming space, when we’re writing free verse. The crafting, indeed.
It’s true. It is our work. THE work, whatever else we may do to feed ourselves and keep a roof overhead. Yet it feels like play: the most absorbing and delightful play. When I’m most deeply involved, ‘I’ disappear; there is only writing. This is what I exist for. And, as you say, we do it regardless of ‘praise or wages’ (or, very much more often, their lack).
I’m with you, too, about that singing light, ‘when only the moon rages’. The moon has always been my muse. As a child, I used to gaze on her for hours through my high, uncurtained bedroom window: a presence both magical and reassuring. I began writing poems when I was seven.
A natural night owl – as well as, for many years, otherwise occupied during my days (studies, employment, child raising ...) – I have usually worked on my poems late at night, with the moon looking in at me through a window. It still happens; although now, old and widowed, I can organise my time as I like.
Once, when my adult son visited, I said to him as he was heading for bed, ‘I might stay up awhile and do some writing.’
‘Try to keep the surprises to a minimum,’ he said, straight-faced. I stared at him blankly.
‘Mum!’ he said, ‘You’ve been doing that as long as I’ve known you.’
September moon –
lighting my desk each night
in slow waxing
Written for Haibun Monday 9-1-25: Labor at dVerse.
('In My Craft or Sullen Art', which Frank Tassone quoted as part of this prompt, has long been one of my favourite poems.)
