6:30, I wake my youngest son. He is still in bed, eyes closed, and under sheets; but his mind is alert and moving.
“I’m writing a poem,” he tells me from his bed.
“That’s awesome!” I respond.
“I was writing it in my dream,” his eyes still closed.
“I’ll leave a piece of paper at the table to see if you can catch it!”
He is still in bed, body unmoved as I leave the room to wake the rest of home.
After, from office, I find a legal pad and worn-tipped pencil. I sharpen the pencil, but I do not do as I said I would. I do not go to kitchen table but straight to where he is.
I know how finicky, elusive, writing sometimes is; how as quickly words and show and wait—ordered, concise, and clear—they, just as fast, can disappear.
I write his story now, in chicken-scratch of my own hand before the story then escapes me too.
“Dad,” I hear from down the hall.
“Yes?” I go as I am called.
I find him finishing last of poem’s scribe, still lying in his bed.
“Do you want to read it?” he asks to me.
“I do!” excited and honored to be invited into written words, and world, of my son.
He hands the paper pad to me, his smile proud and grinning.
I read aloud:
“School is boring. School is boring. That’s because you have to wake up early in the morning. Brush my teeth, comb my hair, I even have to wear underwear.”
He is laughing then, entertained by his words—and to hear them in my voice. Writing, he’s made light of a morning dread—waking up and getting ready for school—and his day begins a little better than the last.
Life’s hard. Poetry—writing—helps.