Poetry - Inspiration

  Come walk with me over and through the waves of a long forgotten dream.

 I look to the horizon as I look to your eyes, placing all of my dreams into the dazzling light that is beheld there.

   As poets, we do not write to satisfy or please others, nor do we seek their approval. We write as a way to get our emotions out, to put our thoughts to paper...to make a part of us that is unseen as something tangible in this world. To leave a small piece of us behind for whoever finds it. Sometimes we write to let an inner emotion escape. To let go of pent up feelings that are causing us great harm. Other times we write from inspiration, perhaps from an observation of beauty that we felt should be described. We might write from an experience that we went through or maybe, even from a source that we can't identify. The words just flow freely into our minds. 

     There is no greater gift to a poet than to be told by a person that your work has touched them. That it describes exactly how they are feeling at that precise moment, or that it matches an experience or situation they are going through at that point in their lives. For someone to tell you that it has given words to a feeling that they were unable to express themselves. When such a gift is given, it means that as a poet, your art is not only affecting your life, it is affecting someone in the world as well. There is no monetary compensation that can ever amount to that. It's something freely given, and that, my friends, is a most special gift indeed.

     The inspiration that leads to my poetry comes from many different sources. Sometimes I am listening to a classical song, and a story is created in my had based on an emotion I feel from that song. Other times there are experiences I am going through or pain that I am suffering from, and writing poetry is a way to deal with that. Sometimes I just need to escape into another world, and create such a world through my writing. Inspiration is never something we can really conjure at our whim. It hits us at unexpected moments, and if we do not grasp that inspiration at that moment, the moment is lost.  All we can do is wait for it to fall upon us again.