“And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter— they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long”. —Sylvia Plath
Best set them down on unsullied paper
Make this the friend you can pour
Your delinquent rough words
Stumbling meaninglessly
Except they are for you
Tumbling over
And over
Themselves
Over the threshold
Let them flow like giddy teenagers
Then
Hide them
For a while
Whilst they recover
When ready take them out
Take them out into the light
Talk to them through and through
Till they behave then decide what to do.
The Sylvia Plath quote came up on Twitter from Ariel Poets to which I replied and this became the seed germ for the poem.
©JohnDaniels
Waking the Baby 