The Path of Water

Musicians spend their time practicing scales, working out chord progressions, or warming up their voices for concerts, trying to match musical notes to the rhythm of words..

Painters spend their time fiddling with watercolors, experimenting with pen and ink, risking very large canvases, wondering if they should be working in oil, or perhaps writing poetry instead.

Writers try their hand at poetry, then flip to short shory, experiment with flash fiction, occasionally wonder if they could possibly write a novella, or perhaps learn how to play the cello.

We are all creators; the knitters, the cooks, the carpenters, the fishermen, the weavers, sailors, the airtraffic controllers and on and on into the night.

We all wonder if our creativity is enough in and of itself. Does a creator need an admirer? or is the process of creating what it’s all about. Of course, we creators say that’s what it’s all about and it’s true! Our lives would feel barren without our inner lives sloshing around, compelling us to think a new thought, experiment with a piece of chalk or write a fairytale about an old man in the neighborhood.

But, but, but…we’d be lyin’ sacks o’ suds (to quote my dear sister, Sheila) if we didn’t admit that acknowledgement, recognition, appreciation, whatever you want to call it - we’d be lying if we said it didn’t matter. Makes sense, because art’s highest and best calling is to convey emotion, to trigger something in the listener, the observer, the reader; something that triggers tears, laughter, sadness, fury, lostness, wonder - a sharing of the human condition.

Writers stay connected to the world by reading to the public and by getting published. My poem, THE PATH OF WATER was included in the inaugural issue of ‘SpecPoVerse’, An International Journal of Speculative Poetry, founded by Miguel O. Mitchell, (science editor, chemist, visual artist, science fiction and fantasy poet and author), and Michael Mial, poet, scholar, dad and lecturer at the U of Minnesota.

THE PATH OF WATER (more folklore than science fiction) appears on p. 36 in the inaugural issue. Click the link to read the entire issue SpecPoVerse, or just read below:

Stay curious.

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