It's a Surprise!

So yesterday's poem was a surprise to me. 

Not that I wrote it. I mean I want to write 8 this month. 

But the last stanza. 

I pulled a twist out on myself!

Which happens sometimes in writing fiction. I say sometimes because most of the time the twist is planned. I know how the story ends. I know the "oh this changes everything" moment. But sometimes when I'm writing what I think is going to be a straightforward easy story something twists at the end surprising even myself.

That was yesterday's poem.  

I had been out digging up daffodils to make way for some bushes we are having planted today. And I went between aggravation that they DID NOT WANT to be dug up and enjoyment of that freshly turned dirt smell. 

I love that smell. 

And when we lived on the urban growth boundary I'd get it in the spring and in the fall in LARGE doses. They turned fields for planting and then after harvest and all of that really rich soil would come to the surface and...ahhh....

Wet dirt.

Seems an odd thing to enjoy the smell of but I know from posting about it one time and the response I got that I am not the only person who thinks it's great. 

As I was digging up the daffodils I was trying to think of something to write. Couldn't really make it poetic but thought, well, maybe it will come to me as I go.

And as I started writing I thought oh maybe I'll tie it into golems. We are all made of earth sort of thing. But then my line about eating it gets really morbid. And then I wrote that line about mouths filled with dirt and...

The images from the bombings and total destruction in Gaza came forward. Ten thousand children dead. Trying to wrap your head around that number is impossible. Looking at the houses just laid to waste and thinking, what if? What if it was your family? 

Bodies of parents lying over their children trying to protect them from the bombs and the rubble. But one frail body is not going to protect another one. Though you would still try. 

Fist fulls of dirt in their mouths. 

It ended up turning the poem on it's head. 

Sometimes when you surprise yourself it's not all that great.