Inspiration

Every once in a while, a seed of inspiration settles in one of those small, fertile crevasses in my soul, and manages to take root just long enough for me to be able to recognise its presence and nurture it before it is dessicated by the dry winds of work or torn up by the storms of life.

Sometimes that little seed will blossom into a poem or a turn of phrase that I'll feel confident enough about to want to share it with others. If I'm really really lucky, someone will say "I see" in response.

People: their presence; their absence; their words, have been the most recent sources of inspiration for me. The discovery that I had an ability to respond to that inspiration , however halting and inconsistent that response might be, is something for which I am truly grateful.

Places, whether it is the memory of laurel walks and the smell of turf smoke, or the sound of crunching gravel and the cooing of pigeons high in wind rustled trees have also fueled my imagination released crystal streams of words that surprise me every time they begin to trickle and flow.

The wonderful thing about words is that we are hardly ever without the means to share or capture them. Visual inspiration is a much more troublesome thing, for me at least. I can see in my minds eye, brilliant pictures, shapes and colours, but all too often they are as fleeting as a rainbow and I can never find the means to share them.

Sitting by the water's edge recently, on a brilliant summer's afternoon, in a place which as been the source of so much inspiration for me, a place where creativity and talent are so plentiful it must surely have infected the air and the water, I had a rare and lovely moment of inspiration. One where the idea , the means to express it and the joy of having someone say "I see" all came together in an instant.

Picking through a hoard of sea glass, I was struck by two pieces in particular and turned to my youthful beach combing companions and said "doesn't that look like....." , and soon we were caught up in excited chatter and plans for a little piece we called "Bride and Groom".