I walk along the shoreline with Beaumont, my Sheepadoodle. He sniffs every blade of grass, every seaweed-strewn rock, his tail wagging in delight. I, on the other hand, am on a different kind of hunt.

My eyes scan the vast expanse of grey – the sea flows like breath, in and out, a constant rhythm of life. The steel-grey clouds swallow the horizon, the charcoal-grey ocean stretches towards the invisible shore. Beneath my feet, the ground is a muted slate carpet punctuated by the occasional glint of ebony. It’s a grey on grey world, mirroring the swirling greyness within my own mind.

But amidst this monochrome landscape, there’s a strange beauty, a sense of quiet power. It both calms and unsettles me. I breathe in the crisp, salty air, tasting the tang of seaweed and the faintest hint of pine. The soft January breeze teases a strand of hair from behind my ear. It tickles my cheek. With each step, I feel the tension in my shoulders easing, my thoughts beginning to settle like sediment in still water.

I walk and consume each step like a chef testing a pot of risotto, seeking the perfect balance between taste and texture. I am a woman on the hunt for stillness; a path back to the computer screen I have left mid-sentence, black on white words trailing off into empty space. Their storyline is not yet formed, their purpose not yet clear.

I left my desk frustrated, confused, even angry. Where is this story going? Who is it truly about? I thought it was the heroine’s story, but as it unfolds, painful keystroke by keystroke, it’s becoming something else. It is the mother’s story, her struggles, her complexities. The heroine is but a foil to her mother’s emotional turmoil and angst.

But I don’t want to write the mother’s story. She is an enigma to me. I want to write the daughter’s. The one whose journey parallels mine in insignificant and sometimes significant ways, but who also holds charcteristics of her own. She is not given to self-sabotage. She is not driven by fear. How can I write of the mother whose constant whining for attention leaves me shaking with grief.

Is the mother more me than the heroine?

This is where the muse finds me. She slips in with wraithlike grace, beguiling, provocative, whispering enticing tidbits of inspiration into my swirling mind before floating away.

Carrying tendrils of her words and images with me, I return home and heed her urgings to “write it out.”

And so it is.

And so a poem is born.