I have stopped writing
to pick blueberries.
Forgive me.

Forgive me for taking your words
while you were gone
words that
sunburn skin
in the depths
of the night
when there are wolves in the
walls

Go ahead
pick the luscious fruit
its blue blood
dripping through
your fingertips having
left behind the
blue ink
striping the page
where terrorists
hide behind weasel words

This blue
amusement of yours
charming your senses
needs no forgiveness
from American gods

When you’re done
find yourself a tearoom
make a cup of
blueberry tea

No forgiveness needed

.
.
.

Author’s Note:

Yesterday Neil Gaiman posted on his Facebook page the following: “I have stopped writing to pick blueberries. Forgive me.”

The beauty of these few words made me gasp. Visions of a writer, putting down his pen because he was drawn to blueberries also led me away to a deep wood in hopes of finding them, too.

I decided that this would be the perfect prompt for our Wednesday Afternoon Writers. We also used Bonnie Neubauer’s on-line Story Spinner to give each writer a set of words to use along with the prompt.

I have been working with “found poems” lately and this prompt offered another chance to take words from another source and weave it into something different.

I hope I am not being pretentious, but I am going to send this poem to Mr. Gaiman. I admire him and if some day by some chance, after writing and writing and writing and writing, I can write just a whisper like he does, I will be a very contented writer.