What Do I See? A Writing Prompt

Writing these little essays is anything but automatic. I struggle for weeks just deciding what I want to write about—what interests me today? What am I curious about, what worries me, what inspires me?

I start, re-think, then start again.

In between, I use a regular writing practice just to get myself primed and in tune.

Since I am in the middle of one of those times, I thought I would share a little peek into one of my fifteen-minute writing practices:

What do I see?

I see my green-globed desk lamp that I love because it is the light I write under every day. It stands at attention with its round brass feet firmly planted—unmoving no matter what, always ready whether I am or not.

By its light I have shared on paper my failures, my missteps, my fears and cares. Under the warm glow it casts across my desk I have penned my hopes and dreams, and most of all my cries to God and sometimes wondered if He has ears.

Under this lamp I have read the words of the greatest of poets—Shakespeare and Milton, Hopkins and Dickenson, Elliot and Yeats, Stevens, Auden, and W.C. Williams. And, I have read some of the worst.

As the light from this lamp fans across my desk top it invites me to sit down and reflect—to enter into silence for awhile—long enough for the noise of this world and the noise from my mind to fade away and allow the music from within my belly to rise and make itself heard.

This desk, lit by this lamp, has now become the world of my imagination and the world of the spirit—including but going beyond all I see with my eyes or feel with my touch or hear with my ears

When I sit still at my desk, I come under the spell of this green- globed, brass- footed lamp, and gradually become more who I am –more than at any other place or time.

Sitting here under this lamp I am at home, where I can be myself as one prone to fall and make mistakes, while I wait in hope to become more of who I will be.

Everything revealed underneath the light of this lamp is a gift—the darkness of my human heart as well as that portion of me that comes only from the divine.

The pen I write with has scribbled for years under this lamp into this fat notebook.  Within these bulky pages are the confused struggles and lavish hopes and deep cries of longing and pleas for help from a man just wanting to do his part in the world.

This old 40 watt lamp creates for me a world of dreams and imaginations and aspirations so real that I run to it each and every morning—believing somehow that just the act of sitting down underneath its light will release me into a new adventure.

Yes, old green lamp. I do see you today.

Bob