The First Line of a Poem
Billy Collins

Before it flutters into my mouth,
I might spend days squinting
into the wind
like an old man
trying to thread a needle
by a window
in the dying light of late afternoon.

In a chair,
he aims the limp end
at the dim glint
of the impossible eye,
narrower than the door of heaven
or the sliver of moon
that will not rise
from behind pines

until the needle
finally slides
along the thin loop
and he eases
into his all-night stitching,
sipping the new wine,
singing a song
the color of his thread.

I finally opened my journals yesterday to see if I could pick up where I had left off. My mornings had changed these past months. More squeezing in a few minutes of respite with coffee than walking and breathing. More quick scrolling than quiet reading. More rushing into the day ahead than waiting in prayer. In Our Long Cold Winter, I lost some of the rhythms of my life. There were no stretches of time. Other things were more important. Instinctively, I conserved my energy for those things. I had forgotten that this focused quiet time and fresh air, replenish rather than deplete. Had I remembered, I would still have struggled to find them.

Two hours slip away as I reenter this rich world of the mind. It needs to be fed. The Word, unhurried prayer, the beautiful words of others . . . literataure, the journaling and contemplation that allow it all to shift into place, into perspective. It’s part of the “price” that Madeleine talks about–this feeding of the soul.

I do not need to be "qualified" to play a Bach fugue on the piano . . . But I cannot play that Bach fugue at all if I do not play the piano daily, if I do not practice my finger exercises. There are equivalents of finger exercises in the writing of books, the painting of portraits, the composing of a song. We do not need to be qualified: the gift is free; and yet we have to pay for it.  –Madeleine L’Engle, Walking On Water: Reflections on Faith & Art

We’re often encouraged to just write, write anything, when we’re stuck. Just get the words down. I agree with that, sometimes. That can work if I’m brainstorming, researching, outlining, journaling, even editing. But I need my subconscious mind turning the soil as I go about walking or washing dishes or rolling pie crust . . . bringing clumps to the surface so I can shake them off and recognize them . . . to create. “There you are!” That detail. That image. That unexpected connection I was listening for.

Poets and songwriters always need that first line to get started, and it’s rarely discovered logically . . . but, rather, emerges from that well-fed soil. That rich interior life is an essential part of the creative process. Without it, I’m like Billy Collins “squinting into the wind,” waiting for that first line of his poem. It’s going to take me a whole lot longer to thread that needle.