Gather the eggs, and don’t forget to close the gate.

Finding the right words is akin to gathering eggs.  I grew up on a farm and ranch, and have always raised chickens.

Free-range hens lay their eggs just about anywhere.  Bucket in hand, I climbed up haystacks, under farm equipment, and behind the feed barrels.  If I was lucky, I collected an egg for every hen.  Sometimes, though, one or more eluded my search.  Just like words.  How to phrase a sentence with just enough words, but not too many?  What if I didn’t find enough eggs for my family’s breakfast or Mama’s sponge cake?

Reaching under a hen in her nest is risky.  She might peck.  If she is a setting hen, there’s a pretty good chance that one day when you gently slide your hand under her fluff, you’ll feel the tiny warm fuzziness of baby chicks.  Luck.  Maybe I’ll get a list sentence, in which every word fits.  A nest-full of beautiful words.

It’s best to carry a flashlight into the hen house.  Sometimes bull snakes, or even worse-rattlers, slither in to enjoy the all-you-can-eat buffet of multicolored orbs.  I hate touching reptiles.  A dictionary is a kind of literary lamp.  It can’t prevent every writing disaster, but it can shed a light.

Carrying a pail of warm brown, white, and green eggs into the house at sundown on a chilly January day is my idea of  perfection.  Feeling their smoothness, I placed each one into its hollow of a gray cardboard crate.  A perfect dozen.  They fit, just like well-written sentences on a page.

You can’t forget to close the gate.  The hens might get out, or a fox might get in.

The same goes for writing.  Too many words, and your thoughts just run away.