When I am not writing, I am thinking;

and when I‘m not thinking, I start thinking about writing, otherwise I am writing.

I do shower, shave, and eat, as well as all those other little things that you do too.

I usually, like some of you, carry paper and pen around to jot things down.

But it’s hard to jot when doing other things like driving, talking on the phone, and I’m sure you have your own list of what you cannot jot and do.

This morning I was writing a wonderful poem in my head while I was cutting the hedges.

That was after thinking, and after thinking about writing, but before actually writing.

I loved the poem in my head. It was fluttering and dancing in my mind as I was cutting away. It started with a simple line. A line about dancing. Just one lilting line. It sang between my ears, louder than the hedger.

The second verse flowed. I watched a man dancing. A Greek man, although as I write this now, it could have been Tevya just as easily as Zorba.

I watched a dance unfold. It was a dance of life. A celebration.

The third verse swelled into a rising sun: joy-shadow dancers silhouetted against a gold-raisin-dawn glorifying a new day – huzzah! A rebirth!

Then I went back to thinking that I had to remember all this, which was not really that much, but I figured I better stop now and get going before I had forgotten what I had written in my head.

So I stopped cutting the hedges and started to go inside my house to write. But as I ducked under the tree limbs, I remembered that I had to prune them a little and so I took a small minute to do a little trimming and then a little raking and then a little stuffing of the branches into the trash bin.

And it was humid, and I was hot, and had trouble breathing, so I sat for a moment to catch my breath; and then I took a cool shower to cool down, and then, as is my custom, I began to think again, and I REMEMBERED!

That grand verse about dawns and dancing!

What were the lines that I wanted to write down after promising myself to remember what I could no longer remember after I cut the hedges while I was now soaping myself up? I swore that, at least, I would write about the poem that I had wanted to write…

But then I remembered that I was in the shower without paper and pen again; and I worried that I would not remember to write about what I wanted to write about while I was in the shower.

So I am now doing this from the best of my memory. I regret that it is third hand information – a hand me down poem/idea that would have been grand if I had ever gotten it out of my head and onto the paper. But I am lucky now to have even remembered this much.

Please enjoy what’s left of it. Happy days.

Randy Mazie