Now O'Clock

Does writing a poem make it mine?

It’s hard for me to share my poetry. It’s hard for me to call it poetry—such a lovely, artistic word I struggle to claim for myself. I’m a writer, yes. But a poet? Hmm. Is that arrogant, pretentious, presumptuous?

If you’ve read my column for a while, you know I’m obsessed with Megan Falley and Andrea Gibson (former poet laureate of Colorado). Last week, I was re-reading Meg’s latest post on Things That Don’t Suck, while waiting for my ACIM study group to begin. Meg only recently returned to her poetry practice, and her latest offering made me cry.

Our study group that day started with a guided meditation that asked us to imagine a clock with no hands, set perpetually to “Now.” I heard two voices in my head asking and answering these first lines over and over, and I paused my Zoom call to write this:

What time is it?
	It is now, my love.
No; but what time is it?
	It is now.

Every moment, every breath
every joy and flight of laughter
that ever we have shared
	is now, my love.

Reach not 
	for souvenirs of a different now
Refuse the ache and regret
 	for that 
	which seems to have passed                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

beyond yesterday
every sparkling 
taste of 
life, scent of love, 
tender, exquisite path of pleasure
once between us, seemingly gone
	is now, my love. It is now.

Feel the light 
once embodied in my arms
	Now
is a taste of eternal
	Now
a reminiscence of lifetimes past 
	or yet to live
a strand of pearls 

to lay
across your throat
encircling your elegant neck
no more
just a dream
	of the now.

Tell me: what time is it, my love?
	It is now.
Ever and always, beloved.
Ever and always
will it be now.

I read this to the class and they asked me to share it, but I hesitated. And then a funny thing happened. A few days later, someone referred to “the poem Lyssa downloaded,” and I thought Oh, yeah. What was that again?

Lying in bed that night, I could summon no memory of the words, the subject matter, the meditation. None of it. I got up and searched my journals for half an hour, trying to find where I’d written it. Gone.

The next morning, the beginning and ending lines came back, but not the rest. After another 45 minutes (of increasingly frantic searching), I found a soft copy on my computer. Ahh.

But that word “downloaded” haunted me. Say I accept that it’s poetry; now I have a different question:

If this poem was downloaded directly following a meditation, did I even write it?

Maybe I’d simply copied down words from my muse, my spirit guides, an angel. Is that what our best writing is? Downloads from the other side. How many times have I woken from a dream that becomes one of my best stories? Is this being in the flow? Or cheating? Maybe I’m plagiarizing the Akashic Records.

Do we plant these things before birth for ourselves to come back to in this life? Leave them with a heavenly collaborator to pass them back again?

Does anyone else struggle with these questions? 🫣 Let’s go back to my initial, simpler confusion—does writing poetry make me a poet? Sure. And with a little heavenly help, one day, I could even be a good one.