Brush Hog

I spent the last hour or so revising what I thought was an old narrative prose post into a poem. It was a poem all along, every since I wrote it this summer, but I didn’t realize it. Upon reading and rereading it this morning, its poetic attributes became clear to me; it felt more emotional than my typical prose posts (which often feel sterile and hollow, on second and third reading). But it needed work. It needed much of the excess clutter cleared away.

If the writing had been a wooded lot, it would have required a team of brush hogs to create a path from front to back. So I created an imaginary brush hog and cleared enough of the lot to enable me to wander freely about the land to see what I could see. And there was something to see. I saw evidence of who I had once been. I was a writer before I turned the corner this morning, morphing into an editor. An editor with a brush hog.

If the sounds I hear are what I think they are, rain has begun to fall. The ground, then, is wet and there’s no dry place for a brush hog to go. I think I’ll dry my fingers and have more coffee.

About John Swinburn

"Love not what you are but what you may become."― Miguel de Cervantes
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