(Photo credit: hang_in_there)

Forgive me, Muse, for I have slumbered. It has been nine days since my last poem.

After writing 366 poems in 366 days, I took a breather. I wondered if I would miss the daily play/exercise with words. I do write for a living, so it’s not like I was leaving the page altogether—just easing up on the daily requirement. In the past week and a half, I have written blog posts, Tweets, Facebook statuses, email messages, PowerPoint slides, news articles, content for a book cover, and several to do lists. But not a single poem.

And I do miss it.

This morning I woke up churning words and ideas. Silly dialogue between a woman and her muffin top. Something about an orphan’s lament. A description—no, the sensation, really—of my son’s deep and deepening voice. Fragments of poetry.

During my 2012 poem-a-day experiment, when anyone asked where I got my ideas, the response was easy: I relied on a numbered list of 366 prompts to spur each day’s poetic work. I doubt I could have met the daily goal without that steady stream of topics. But I also worried that I would become dependent on it: “What if the only way I can write a poem is as conditioned response to a prescribed prompt? What if I never generate an idea of my own?”

But the ideas are there, and so is the desire. Evidently, a year of practice was enough to awaken the poet inside me.

The Muse is forgiving.

More poetry to come …