Can I say again how incredible this Challenge is and how grateful I am to be participating? People are writing amazing, beautiful stories. My only regret is that I really only have time to read a fraction of them. One of the blogs that I’ve discovered through SOLC is Kelly Mogk’s Project Chameleon. On Tuesday, Kelly shared Brigit Zinn’s heartbreaking story. She also talked about having unclaimed writing dreams that, for whatever reason, we are not fulfilling; goals that we’re not even working toward fulfilling.

This inspired me to back through my notebooks to see what was languishing there. Something for a story? The first lines of a poem?

I found this, written on Jan. 16, 2011

Writing exercise via The Huffington Post: Pick the 7th book from your bookshelf, open to the 7th page, find the 7th line, then write a 7 line poem that begins with that line.

The 7th book: The Planets, by Dava Sobel (Viking, 2005).

The 7th sentence on the 7th page:  “Even though Pluto remained unexplored, deemed too distant and too difficult to visit, it’s own unexpected moon was discovered accidentally in 1978, through careful analysis of photographs taken by ground-based telescopes.”

Rather unwieldy for a poem. However, I think “too distant and too difficult” has possibilities.

Too distant are you from me now;

Our hearts diverged long ago

Too difficult the journey back

Your dreams led down a different path

Back to today. This feels unfinished, but I don’t think I would change what’s already here. Will I make the time today to work on this poem? It’s unlikely. Over the next week? Maybe. But now it’s back in my head, and I can think about it. I can try to follow it to the end of its path.

Thank you to Stacey and Ruth at Two Writing Teachers for hosting this Slice of Life Challenge!