This poem is a response to L L Barkat's Seedlings in Stone blog on her writing table ---
MY CLUTTERED TABLE OF CREATIVITY.
Some people say that a cluttered room
Distracts the mind from productivity –
“Clean up the outer mess, and your inner life
Will be more peaceful,
Setting free a burst of creativity.”
I don’t find that so, at all!
Please see in my clutter a hint of nativity –
The advent of being free to act as a midwife
To birth a cupful
Of expressions of artistic activity.
Oh, look! I’m an artist after all.
I thought that part of me had shriveled up and died.
So many other interruptions hindered me.
But now I have materials out in sight,
And someday, surprising works
May bloom from my shelves or wall.
My Dining Room table is a mess.
Bless this mess, O God!
My table is an activity room all by itself.
The place where I read and sort my mail
(And park the pieces I can’t decide whether to save or toss.)
Devotionals and Christian writings lie scramble-piled,
Near at hand, my necessity.
There’s a spot where salt shaker,
Cinnamon shaker, and bottles of
Digestive tablets hover at ready.
Two days ago the clean, crisp swirls
Of a pink-red rose were worth some photo shots;
Now the rose is shriveling, I’ll get around to ditching it.
Tomorrow, maybe.
My Amplified Bible stays out in sight,
In case I want to glean its treasures
While I eat or work or think;
Yet it’s doing another duty, for underneath its weight
A batch of leaves are pressed!
Leaves that when fully dried, will
Go in some arty design.
The rest of the table is occupied.
Call it a mess, or call it inspiration.
If “out of sight is out of mind,”
Then being close at hand must spur me on
To create and build and re-wind.
Curliques and shreds of bark from neighbor’s trees.
Dried grasses plucked from sidewalk cracks.
A bit of plastic dust (green) from sawing
A liquid detergent bottle into odd strange rings.
A bit of feather, a snatch of lichen, and
Some home-deco brought in by a friend.
A big bowl of pine cones which had got its picture taken.
Marking pens, scissors, toothpicks, and cut up bottles,
And a great big bottle of Elmer’s glue.
(I tell you, this list is really all true!)
Oh, yes, there’s also an empty space!
It isn’t a large place, but cleared off
Just enough so I may lay my plate and
Eat my daily meals.
Bless the food I eat to nourish me, Lord.
And bless this mess, oh God!
For “surely the presence of the Lord is in this place”.
At my overflowing dining room table
I worship and praise and pray,
Even as I play and play.
From this clutter, have I taken countless snapshots.
Close-ups of individual materials. And
“Made by me” things besides.
So far I’ve created a tree form from bark curls. And
An ornament with tiny pebbles and
Tiny sprig of stiffish grass-head.
A cotton puff (once from a pill bottle) and
A scrabbly bitty piece of burlap, frayed,
That I don’t remember how I even got –
Well, those two dissimilar, ordinary parts
Became “White Manx Cat Settling Down”:
A strictly temporary artwork,
For if touched or pulled the cat shape
Will shrink or maybe disappear.
But I have many other ideas in mind.
I just have to grab the right oddments,
Find the right free time.
Photos and text
© 2010 by Marilee Miller
Feel free to link to this, but please no copying without permission.
In my next post I hope to show more materials on the table, and a few finished projects.
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