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Committing a Write

When did "write" become a noun?

Instead of the verb it was when I was young.

"Nice write," someone said the other day,

As though the act of sitting down at my desk

And bleeding onto paper were the thing itself

Regardless of the thing that's left upon the paper

When the bleeding is well and truly done

And I hold it up for others to see and judge the result.

It's not a "write" for heaven's sake.

You might as well say "Good typing."

I do not write to win the praise of others

For the act of spilling words onto the page.

I write to make a story or a poem or a remembrance.

To praise the "write" is to grant the writer

A consolation prize for showing up.

For perpetrating words to indifferent effect.

One might as well say "Good build" to a carpenter

Or "Good paint" to an artist when what they want to hear

Is "That's a beautiful house," or

"That painting takes my breath away."

God help us when we so fear to tell the truth

We forget how to see the beauty in a thing complete

In tune with itself and its creator.

Lest someone lesser gifted be offended.

How in the hell that we are building for ourselves,

Can we mortal men and women, carved in the image

Of the Almighty, His children, each, himself, a small creator

Forget that it is not that we have tried to make some thing

That's beautiful, but that we have in some small way succeeded,

And in those things that we have made, be they life or song or story,

We have left behind a bit of glory, however ephemeral

That casts a smile of joy across the face of God.

It is the song that is beautiful.

Sing it to the heart that wants uplifted.

It is the story that is heart-warming.  

Tell it to the one that needs to hear it.

It is the gift that is given freely.

Give it to the child who wants it.

It is the image in the stone that sings to us.

Sculpt it from the living rock.

To try is not itself reward enough for any soul

In which eternal God sets up his habitation.

To do, to finish every line that must be writ or work complete

Is all there is that is worth the effort that's required.

It's not the writing, the building, the working or the trying

That makes a life worth all that effort; that makes us want to see

More treasures that a man might yet complete,

Should God grant him better tools and access to eternity.

© 2014 by Tom King