It's something only you can give yourself: a space to create, sweet as ripe cherries. To find it, buy it with love for your creative self, wrap it in ethereal sheets of time, and then unwrap it as though you deserve every crinkle of the delicate paper and every silky ribbon of ink. You give yourself permission to NOT write a word. Not even think. To drift, a poet in poet time with the willingness to do absolutely nothing if that's what comes. To think about writing without necessarily saying anything is permission. Here's a poem about it from my book Gods of Water and Air.
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Life
I had a beautiful bowl of cherries
to paint, stems perfectly arranged,
the jade
bowl offsetting the pale red fruit.
I ate them. Such is the fate
of so much art. But only the
serious kind.
At least this artist won’t starve.
Looking at a half bowl of cherries
I still want to create. Maybe a
painting
of the pits in another bowl, so
much life
gone by. Or perhaps a poem about
the greed
of the painter for sensuous
delight, story
of artists and their models through
the ages
and also the story of the art
that was never made
while they became their own
works of art. Jade bowl. Stems.
Hungers ripe and aching.
Summer’s half moon warmth.
Tender flesh. (Note to self:
They were so ripe and cold.
Put cherries on the grocery list.
The dark ones this time.)
I'm offering a 10% discount off the Amazon price of Gods of Water and Air during September. Write to me if you want one!
Labels: being a poet, Gods of Water and Air, poetic craft, poetry book, Writing
