Seeds and Images

I always find it quite a curious process how, as a writer, you can sit before a blank page or screen and drop a little seed or un-worked gem onto the page.

"His hair was meandering sand dunes in the desert wind"

Opening line of a poem I'm working on - Snow Diamonds

It is something crude and ill worded and barely fits the idea or image the writer has painted in their mind. Yet we can come back to it and prune it, weed it, reshape and form it. Some how take the words we deemed perfect before and re-shape them into something more perfect than before.

"His hair was sand in the desert wind"

Redrafted - Snow Diamonds

Then looking once again, in the full flow of the text, it fits better; more concise and honed. Yet still a million miles from what we desire. But now it has been honed and refined it allows something else to drift through, entirely new, yet entirely the same.

"Soft the supple skin of snow lies,

Paler still against the desert sands

That lay in wandering dunes upon his head."

Draft 3 - Snow Diamonds

And on the game goes, never perfect, always shrinking and growing. Yet somehow each time pushing closer to what should be. What can be...