A poem of sorts by Jane Clamp

This month, with the world feeling a very different place, I didn’t have any great pearls of wisdom to impart to those who know far more than me anyway. So here’s a poem (by which I prove I’m most certainly not a poet, and this may give great hope to some of you who realise that you jolly well are) and I hope it lifts your soul just a little.



“I’d be prolific if I wasn’t so busy,

My talent needs so much more time.”

hurstonwright.org

“Of course I could match JK Rowling,

Why, her output would pale before mine!”



Such delusions continued unchecked for so long

- Why, how could one otherwise prove? –

When life’s daily pace and its crack of the whip

Made avoidance perpetually smooth.



But one day my push did indeed become shove:

My diary would have to be cleared.

No work to be done, no places to go,

My writerly heart all but cheered.



I sat at my desk, the moment had come

For my novelist self to be born.

But ideas were stuck as in so much mud

And refused all attempts to conform.



So I’ve learned, after two weeks of lockdown,

That time isn’t the real issue at all.

I remember my life has a rhythm

Set by the One who first made the call.



I’m a writer, He said, and that holds just as good

When words flow and when they absent.

I’m His child just the same and He calls me by name –

Which isn’t JK Rowling or Dickens or Shakespeare

Or anyone famous at all –

And I find it enough; I’m content.

Jane Clamp is the author of Too Soon, a mother's journey through miscarriage (SPCK). She appears regularly on UCB and Premier Radio and, in socially closer times, runs writing retreats in various locations.
www.janeclamp.com