Inspiration Comes from Different Places

I bought a pack of fortune cookies when I was going to be serving Chinese to guests. As usual most meant nothing of consequence. One however read like a prophecy:
"Your heart is pure, your mind clear and your soul devout."
I would like to think my heart is pure, I’m a believer and my sins got washed away. Now I try to live the life God would want me to live. My mind is not as sharp as it once was but I have to believe that is merely aging and perhaps lack of exercise, for I know your mind gets sharper with good blood flow.

Another good thing is a very profound in one of my writing groups, (writershelpers@yahoogroups.com), there is a fellow who always writes in poetry. I am very selective about the poems I choose to collect but this one will be in my personal collection.

Things You Just Cannot Do

You just cannot sit down and write

a poem of vast enlightenment

or sublime simplicity like the macrocosm or microcosm.

It would be easier to write,

Once upon a time, there was a blue bear....

For a poem, you need words

sharp as blades,

daring to fill gaps

in lines with exacting purpose,

calculated only by muse and perhaps revision.

But, is a poem ever really finished?

The blue bear may end his season by snoring

at home for the winter. A poem has to keep swimming,

a thresher shark in deep water,

never stopping for fate of death.

jon "jon j." iamb1000@yahoo.com

I include that poem because it has touched me. I think it is brilliant. "Words like sharp blades," or the question, "Is a poem ever really finished?" Every few years I go back through my old poems and always find things to refine in an old poem.

I got started writing again I had taken some time away from writing. But, I’m back!