Dusting off Wands

Photo by Kenny Gaines on Unsplash

I am a late blooming writer. And like many of you, I hesitate to even use the word. I don’t write everyday, and I’m not all that creative. But I do love that rush of discovery when untapped words and sounds surface and land on a page.

This month I celebrate the first anniversary of my poetry collection, All the Untils.

I’ve been an English teacher for several years and every so often I get to teach a C.S. Lewis course for high school juniors and seniors. The readings and teachings are always life-changing for me. When Jonathan Rogers of The Habit Podcast asks his guests, “Who is the writer that makes you want to write?” my heart hears echoes of Lewis, and I find myself reaching for a pencil and paper. OK, so a maybe a keyboard.

This poem is a tribute to Lewis who inspired me to pick up my own pen, reminding me that I am now old enough to start reading (and writing) fairy tales again.

Dusting off Wands 
A golden shovel from the The Lion,Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

I remember the Three Little Pigs and some 
seed of belief in a breath’s power, before the day 
that time blew down the sticks of knowing you
as a godmother whose wand flicked my will 
into its own charmed chariot, and I could be 
whisked from the dark forest of growing old 
or meeting another big bad wolf—free enough
from the fated gales that razed a child’s play, to 
see today’s once upon a time with a fresh start, 
when the journey of unrequired reading
unearths the truths of buried fairytales
and the magic of a Breath is born again.