The Gardener

I am a gardener.

My notebook is my garden.

Empty it lies fallow

until in it I sow germs of ideas and

scatter random thoughts like seeds over the pages.

It becomes my Yates catalogue:

full of good intentions.

I rake over the writing,

weeding out unwanted words, yet

no notes are wasted;

trimmings and snippets are

caste into compost

forming a heap of hope which, with time,

takes on a literary life of its own,

feeding my imagination,

fertilising my creativity.

I forage and fork,

I prod and poke,

I plot my plot, I till

until characters bud and

a storyline grows.

Sentences take shape

phrases become paragraphs become pages

seasons come and go and lo, at last,

A story blossoms.

I am a gardener.

I am the garden.

© ian mcdougall September 2006