Magical Moments
As some of my Twitter followers will know, on Sunday I was struggling with the words. I was trying to work on my work in progress, an adult novel, which currently stands at 57,000 words. I’m not obsessed with my word count, but I do find it helps if I set targets for the day. I managed a somewhat pathetic 140 words in an hour, and I’m not even sure they were good ones. My head was full of stuff, I was distracted, felt unfocussed, just couldn’t get under the characters’ skins, something I don’t normally have a problem with. It just wasn’t happening. I got angry. I had a moan on The Twit – thank you to all those who perked me up a bit – and decided a hound walk was needed! Along with tea, cheesecake, and a variety of other beverages that shall not be named, a hound walk pretty much solves all evils as far as I’m concerned.
So, I donned my walking shoes and jacket and ventured out with the hound. I stomped up the road, earphones in, Linkin Park blasting in my ears, arms swinging like a woman on a mission. Anyone who saw me probably quaked in their boots! We made our way out to the fields, my favourite place, and carved ourselves a path through the evergrowing grass and thistles. I chopped the tops off the grass as we walked with the side of my hand (that’s how fed up I was) and kicked the thistles out of the way. It was boggy, wet, slippy underfoot in places, but the more I stomped, the better I began to feel.
A few fields in, we passed through the kissing gate and into a field of very long grass. Then, all at once, my stomping stopped. Something quite amazing was happening. Above my head, six or seven house martins appeared from nowhere. I stood rigid, eyes to the skies, jaw dropped, and watched as they dove above me, swooping at shoulder height alongside me, dancing four or five feet above my head. I stood like this, knee deep in long grass, watching, for what seemed like an eternity, but in reality was probably a few minutes. By the time I moved, my cheeks were wet through with tears, my heart full of joy.
Somebody up there, the big fella in the sky… whoever… saw fit to give me five minutes of magic. I shall never forget it. Those few minutes are up there with the invisible singing skylarks in a clear blue sky at Magpie Mine, up there with the day in rural France when they had the most amazing storm – the first rain for four years – and all the people who lived and worked on the free range turkey farm I was staying on (yes, really!) danced and sang in the rain… and yes, I joined in! And yes, his magical moment cleared my head. I came home, and I wrote this blog post and this poem, inspired by the whole thing. Wonders will never cease eh?
Send in the birds
Head barbed and spinning
I seek out peace beyond house walls
that wraps their hands around my throat,
beyond the absence of words
pound out pain in fierce footsteps,
crush thorns beneath my feet.
And the wind in my face
tells me stories.
The rain on my skin says hello.
Spaces wrap around me
and pull me ever forwards,
beating out the rhythm
of my tangled heart.
Then I stop,
stand still in grass knee high,
no twitch no twist
just a tilt of the head
as birds swoop like stars
dividing and cutting the light
around my eyes,
almost brush my shoulder
as tears brush my cheeks,
a welcome release
and those absent words begin
to form again.
Have you ever had any truly magical moments that have helped your writing?
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