Writing by Joyce Rupp

I wait out sluggish days,

empty evenings, mulish

attempts to capture words

hiding themselves

inside the undulating sea

of my mental thesaurus,

not even remotely available

for me to scoot them

onto my fingers and

into necessary revision.

So I wait, and wait,

and wait some more

while I fumble uselessly

with worthless concoctions

until

one early dawn

the tide comes in

and the first word peeks out.

then they all follow,

and like a flock of gulls

I swoop in to snatch

the sea’s latest prey.