I didn’t mean for anyone to read this poem.

It wasn’t written to be published or submitted or even shared. It started, simply, as an exercise; one of those quiet, necessary moments where the goal isn’t brilliance but movement. A way to stretch the muscles of language and rhythm, to keep my ear tuned and my hands steady. I wrote it to play with rhyme, meter, and pacing. I wrote it to practice.

And yet, as I read it over, I realized it had become something more. Somehow, in the process of focusing on structure and sound, I stumbled into meaning. Not planned, not profound, not even particularly clear, but present. This poem surprised me by saying something about the very thing I was doing: showing up to create, even when there’s no grand insight or burning idea, only the desire to make something that feels like poetry.

That’s the part of the craft I return to again and again. The feeling.

I admire poets who make sound and rhythm felt, who write poems that don’t just speak, but move. A line that stumbles like a misstep. A stanza that lifts like a breathless sigh. A whole poem that gallops, halts, hushes. I think that’s what I was chasing here, even if I didn’t know it at the time.

I tend to write in free verse, and I love the looseness and natural cadence of language when it isn’t boxed in. But this time, I leaned into constraint. I let myself be guided by rhyme and meter, not to create something polished, but to stay in practice. Sometimes the process matters more than the product. Sometimes the work is the point.

So, I’m sharing this poem, not because it’s perfect or even because it’s particularly me, but because it helped me remember that writing doesn’t always have to be a revelation. Sometimes it’s just something you do because you love language, because you want to feel the weight of words click into place, because you’re trying to get better.

Here’s the poem.
It came out of nowhere, but it taught me something.

Creation

The trench winds deep with endless sickness,
through feasts of fruit and wilted blooms;
it bows to the unbuilt bridge’s quickness,
its arc a sweep through shadowed rooms.

Wonder hides not just in whispers broken,
nor in the strain of truths unclear;
but in the threads of brilliance woven,
where effort’s toil makes beauty near.

Work not lightly on heaven’s tether,
nor let wisdom falter in the books;
braided strands of stars together,
find their strength in steady nooks.

Span the oxen’s weighted crossing,
till their path aligns with twine;
mend the breach … for in their offering,
rests the mark of the divine.

If you write—poetry, prose, anything really—do you let yourself play sometimes?
Do you ever write just to move the pen and see what happens?
What surprises have come from the things you didn’t mean to make?

Let me know. I’d love to hear what you’re practicing.