Pruning

I need to prune the roses

Baring tender stems.

Crinkled buds protect from frost

Til washed by gentle rains.

I need to prune my chapters

Painful as it seems.

Spattered words undo the finish

By hanging in the sentence.

I hit delete to terminate

Useless tangled words.

Replaced “the it and there”

With descriptive names and places.

The practice of organizing words in the form of poetry is a good exercise for developing good writing skills. I wanted to write about my struggle with organizing and editing my writing. As I rewrote this poem several times I asked myself these questions:

What am I trying to say?

How do the words sound out loud?

Do I have unnecessary words?

Would another word better convey the meaning?

Do I want to keep making the poem better or finish?

Is it worth my time to write this?

I decided it was worth my time to practice exploring word choices. Then I needed to get it done and move on. Tomorrow is another day and another walk.

25 minutes walking