Nothing is Lost and Nothing is Wrong

A relief to know that whatever you write goes into building the foundation of what’s coming up. It goes into the site of your constructing. It’s needed, although no one else, and sometimes not even you, know why. But since you can’t build a house in the air, you have to stand it on something, and the area that you stand it on can have the pieces and remnants of other construction attempts and revisions.

You may need to write ten poems in order to get to the eleventh which finally stands on its own without wobbling. It may be so solid because of what it came after, and what’s underneath it on the ground and three feet under the ground. Since every builder in a northern climate knows that the frost line is three feet down in the ground, and if you want to build a house that doesn’t shift and move, you’ve got to pour your foundation down there under.

You don’t fear rejection because you know that you have your own reasons for writing what you write. And you, yourself, will not reject your attempts to “get it,” because they are all feeding into the process of what you trust will finally stand.