“Be loyal to your creativity and it will be loyal to you,” a poet told me. He is serving a life sentence in prison and spends his time in the physical confines of a cell making amends with that creativity by writing poems for the sake of it.
Trace the word “sentence” to its Latin source and find “sentire,” meaning “feel, be of the opinion.” I realize I not only make sentences on a page, I give sentences when I speak, and when I define something or classify it. And I serve self-imposed sentences by deciding what to say and do.
Write your own sentences of small observations of what matters to you. In doing so, you sketch ideas on the page with words, and you determine what your own life sentence will be. What you pay attention to reveals who you are.
Prompt:
As you go about your day, note your observations as complete sentences. You can say them to yourself, speak them aloud (go ahead and talk to yourself...people will think you're on the phone!), or write them down.
Here's what I came up with during a morning walk.
The neighbor's sweeping leaves from the patio.
The wind lifts them and blows them away again.
Her broom is new, the broom straws yet unworn.
I'm so glad the weather's cooler.
If you can take a few more minutes, transform these sentences into a poem.
September Thursday
Wind lifts leaves from the patio,
blows them away. Fresh broom straws,
cooler weather. Neighbor sweeping--
A sketch written purely to exercise the poetic mind, feed the creativity muscle. It's like taking a gentle stretch.
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