The Making of a Poem

Kelpies

Sometimes ideas spring fully formed when I’m writing while at other times the muse goes walkabout. One of my poems, ‘Where Kelpies Sing’, took a while to become that form. I initially had the idea for a flash fiction story after seeing a beautiful carousel while on holiday one year. The painted horses looked forlorn, neither moving nor carrying riders, yet it was well kept suggesting it still operated at specific times. It provided an idea of sightless horses forever turning but going nowhere, as well as a sense of loss.

It then reminded me of a haiku I had written about the ‘white horses’, as we call them, on a turbulent sea and I reimagined this as the image of a woman staring into this wild sea, suffering loss and grief.

Developing both ideas further, I thought of our Scottish mythological kelpies, the water-spirit horses that can entice an unsuspecting person beneath the waves if they get too close. I’m lucky enough to live within easy driving distance of the magnificent Kelpies steel statues at Falkirk which I’ve visited often. Since I love mythology and legends, as well as a touch of mystery, it added another element to the poem.

The sea is still today;

no white horses

dancing the waves

foretelling black storms.

Only the empty stares

from a painted carousel

reminding me

life is circular.

We all return

to the quiet earth—

except for you.

You sing and play

in the fathomless ocean

where kelpies breathe life

into drowned lungs.

I watch the turning seasons

beside the silent horses

on their endless ride

through time and space.

Hoping the calm water

will cleanse dark thoughts

to let me glimpse you dancing. 

And thus, these three ideas and images eventually merged into one idea for a poem. After much thought and redrafting, I submitted it to an American journal of music, mystery and myth, Wild Musette, and was delighted when it was accepted and published in print (the publication is now closed). Like most poems, readers can bring their own interpretation to it.

Now, it resides amongst other poems, articles and short stories in my Words for all Seasons collection where I was able to illustrate many of them with my own photos.

Not all of my poems take such a roundabout way to become one that I’m happy enough to submit anywhere, but sometimes it’s fun to bring different ideas together to make something completely new.

Rosemary