Because the blank page is just so, well, blank.

Because writers — like lawyers and doctors — are keen to practice their craft, I offer this practice poem. Please note: Layering new atop old frees the mind. Don't think, just write.

With inspiration from, and thanks to, Ex Libris Anonymous, recycling old books to create new, one-of-a-kind journals.

Second growth

Make the forest
a secret you keep.
Hemlock, fir, sitka, cedar —
grow tall in damp days, forge
hill and sky in a tower of tough skin
and bristle, an endlessness
we envy.

In this terrain, sun is memory,
light a wish. This is the myth
of patience: if you are
calm and still, if you wait,
something will arrive,
change, rearrange your
fear, your flee.

To pause in the wanting,
in the day, in the wish
and want and hope. To stop
helping, knowing, nodding,
to retreat, rewind, release.

This is the hush of understory:
the firmness between elbow and wrist,
tender rust in a knuckle,
the softness of lobe —
a forest's slow growth.

- Drew Myron