First Draft

Human life so fragile,
arriving abruptly at birth,
equal stature for all newborn,
yet time reshapes our worth.

The body of life grows on,
alike the rose and weed,
breaking through the surface of earth,
each searching for its need.

Shoots become buds…
buds become flowers…
The rose rises high in stature,
crowned with glory and praise.

The weed not so much—
brushed aside as barrenness,
unwanted among the gardens
where admiration stays.

And here I stand now…
lost somewhere within myself,
a poet wandering wordless
through a thick and endless forest.

My thoughts drift like fog
between the darkened trees.
I search for the next line,
the next meaning,
the next breath upon the page.

In my vision
I see words riding over fences,
wild and untamed,
escaping before I can catch them.

Sentences seep upward
from the forest floor like weeds,
curling around my boots,
whispering fragments of poems
I cannot fully hear.

Which one do I choose?

Do I have the right theme?
The right tone?
The right sorrow hidden between the lines?

Or am I simply another weed
mistaken for a rose,
searching for crowns
never meant for me?

Help me find the next word…
the constant plea inside my mind.

I listen to the trees creak softly,
their branches scratching at the sky
like unfinished verses
reaching toward something greater.

Perhaps poetry itself
is not about perfection,
but about wandering through darkness
until one small word blooms.

And maybe somewhere beyond these woods,
beyond the tangled roots of doubt,
a single sentence waits for me—
quietly growing
like a flower breaking through the earth.

Paul Baldry

I wrote The Forest of Unwritten Words as a reflection on creative struggle, self-doubt, and the fragile search for meaning within poetry itself. The poem begins flowing naturally for the first few verses, before the poet suddenly falls into a mental block, wandering through imagined forests of thoughts, words, and unfinished sentences while desperately searching for the next verse to bloom from the darkness.

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