My eyes run ahead of me and jump about ——

As a child I used to gobble up words; now I eat more slowly. My child’s eyes ran ahead of me; they still do but I’ve learned to edit, to slow down. All writers must edit — over and over — folding down the seams, tucking in the corners, smoothing down the sheets. I often make mistakes now; my eyes are jumpy and unreliable. They let me down. I made a mistake a few days ago in one of my sentences written up here. I found it, I claimed it, I have corrected it. It was a sentence about replicating the structure of a pattern. My pattern was off. I wasn’t tuned in. Perhaps I wasn’t listening.
I learnt to write by pattern and rhythm, through my ear, from poetry and song. I must remember that when my eyes are playing up. Close your eyes and listen for the song; the tune will come. She will find you.
As a child I was good at hopscotch — I loved the shape of the squares — some two or three across, some only one. I landed well, confidently and firmly, my legs knew what to do. I was terrible at long jump; my legs wouldn’t move, my brain disconnected, it was too much of an expert performance. I lay like a squashed beetle in the sand hoping the sand would cover my shame. Writing is one big long sand pit; sometimes the sand is warm and lovely and you want to lie down in it, and sometimes it’s cold and damp and full of sharp and foreign objects: crushed beetles, broken bottles, chipped shells — it’s easy to be disgusted —- but when you look up from the pit you see that the sand stretches on and on along the shore. For miles.

For Lemn