Draft Process: An Alternate End to the Story

65º ~ hello spring

Just a quick note to say that even though I tried to draft over the weekend, nothing came of it except a bunch of terrible lines more prose than poetry.  And then, this morning, I was reading my blog feed and stumbled on Verbatim's post of "Four Trees Quartet."  Verbatim is a site for found poems, in this case, a set of poems built from lines in a field guide to trees.  Of course, this was right up my alley.  As I read, I kept coming back to the last line of "Eastern Hemlock," "as fuel, the wood throws sparks."  Eventually, I had to copy that line into my journal, and then more lines followed of my own.

This weekend, I kept trying to draft about the fact that there is a girl missing here in Arkansas.  Her stepfather was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound but so far, she has not been found.  At the beginning, the searches met daily; now it is on the weekends and holidays.  Let me say this: I do not want to write about this girl, this tragedy, but she keeps turning up.  I've seen too many of these stories unfold to hold out much hope for a happy ending, so I kept wanting to write her an alternate ending, an ending of power.

That's what happened this morning.

Still, I do not know if this poem will go beyond this draft.  I do not know if this is my story to tell.  I do not know if this is exploiting the girl in question.  I only know the draft had to be written.