On the Fence

Someone in my FB group said she was on the fence about whether to join the 5-Day Challenge to Write Without the Fight that starts tomorrow, March 16th at noon PT (3pm ET).  On the fence… undecided… noncommital. This is a lot of why we don’t write, too. Yeah, but… And I still have to…  goes our thinking.

The fence is an interesting place to abide, if like many writers, you want all the possible possibilites to remain open and accessible to you. But we can’t write a book (poem, script, song, story) without NOT writing many others. It is time to make creative decisions.  But in the meanwhile, I share this poem.

‘The Fence’ is written by Lenrie Peters (1932-2009), a Gambian surgeon, novelist, poet and educator.

The Fence

There where the dim past and future mingle

their nebulous hopes and aspirations

there I lie.

There where truth and untruth struggle

in endless and bloody combat,

there I lie.

There where time moves forwards and backwards

with not one moment’s pause for sighing,

there I lie.

There where the body ages relentlessly

and only the feeble mind can wander back

there I lie in open-souled amazement.

There where all the opposites arrive

to plague the inner senses, but do not fuse,

I hold my head; and then contrive

to stop the constant motion.

my head goes round and round,

but I have not been drinking;

I feel the buoyant waves; I stagger

It seems the world has changed her garment.

but it is I who have not crossed the fence,

So there I lie.

There where the need for good

and “the doing good” conflict,

there I lie.