This poem is about The Zone, the state of being totally and utterly focused on your work. The whole world fades away and it’s just you and your writing (or art or music or whatever). They say the endorphin rush you get from a runner’s high is the same endorphin rush as being in the zone.

I love the zone. I don’t always get it. It requires the ability to concentrate for long enough to get in the zone, and there are plenty of things that can draw me out of that state—dogs, for example. Cats. Weather. Pain. The Spouse. Etc.

But, it’s great, regardless.

I wrote this poem when I wanted to get in the zone and couldn’t. It was a memory of what it was like being in the zone, with the hope that focusing on achieving that sensation would allow me to get to it again.

Unified, All of Me

It’s like being whole
for the first time again.
The perfect balance of
calm and tension.
The ache and relief
The pain and the peace
Like my true self has awakened
for the first time again.

Bird on the wing
Wind rushing free
A broken dance

It’s like being whole
for the firs time again.

Unified, all of me.