A Moment's Breath

So last week or so a bunch of folks were talking about expressions of women's desire, and context thereof, and I wound up spending about a week and a half trying to write a poem. I did write it, but it falls short of what I wanted to say, so I'm still left with inarticulacy.

And here's the thing: art is hard.

I can tell you flat out that if I could know one thing about my lover, it would be how to bring out the fire in his eyes. I can tell you flat out about the time I rested my hand on my pseudoniece's back and recognised her as one of my tribe, a small person who is, in part, my responsibility, the understanding of the importance of a small life to me. I can tell you that I spotted a cardinal yesterday, a splash of colour in a grey-and-brown world, and that I found it captivating.

I can just tell you these things.

Telling you doesn't mean you feel them. And perhaps those people who know what I mean -- know the other side of the mystery, in the classical sense -- will take my pointing and saying, "I mean that thing" and know how it feels. But that's luck, hitting something that can serve as a signpost. It isn't craft, the ability to lay the foundations so that people who don't happen to know that specific vantage point in detail already can maybe catch the hint of what I'm talking about.

The evocation, the ability to convey an emotion, an idea, an experience, something from inside my head, is the magic. And the magic takes work, mere passion will not do it. If mere passion were enough, that damn poem would have been a lot easier. There's still the crafting, the assembling, the putting it together into something that will encapsulate that thing, whatever it is, and express it elsewhere -- express beauty, or lust, or faith, or revelation, or some moment that was exactly what it was. And that part is hard work, and complicated.

There is something in there that defines reality, what it means, transforms a moment into something that can be eternal, expressed outside of time. That's a powerful magic to work.

And it's really goddamn hard.