Poem: The Act of Writing

The Act of Writing
Craig Chen

Writing exhumes.
It unearths, resurrects--
and not from tombstones
(except on days we write of zombies)
no--writing is tilled earth;
stillness ingrained, deeply planted;
it is sweat and callous,
work-song.
Writing draws out seedlings
and occasionally it floods.
We work fields
and writing scrubs off layers of skin
and finds a different word than raw
to describe beneath.
Writing buoys.
It floats, bubbles out, a splash inverted,
expands larger than you or I could have said,
levitates away.