Once I read a book about a girl who wrote poetry.  She had an interesting way of writing it.  She would think of an entire poem at a time – it would just pop into her head – and then she had a few-minute window in which to write it down.  If she didn’t write it down, she lost it.  It was gone.

I write (really bad) poetry occasionally when I’m feeling deep.  Or when I’m at the library doing physics and don’t feel like doing physics anymore.  I was penning some lines today when I thought of that book.  And, since I was in deep mode, something occurred to me.

Where do those poems come from?  Do they begin life inside her head and then leave like a bird leaving the nest?  Or were they always sitting around in the atmosphere and she just happened to walk through them?

And if that girl loses her poetry, where does it go?  Will anyone else pick it up as it floats around in space?  Or will all these verses disintegrate into average, everyday thoughts?  Will it dissipate, to be put back together by someone else – will it be, in effect, reborn?  Or will it just sit in time, lost to us forever?

That begs the question, what genius have we lost in moments of time?  What new technology, what creative expression, what profound realization is gone because someone missed the window?

Never

This want

This inelegant longing

This passive act

So one-sided

Will not bear fruit.