LESSON ONE: GOING BEYOND

The first prerequisite for writing is
A taste for solitude, a loneliness
Not lonesome, but replete with images
That fantasy supplies and Muses bless.

For if your hours are filled with busyness
And you’ve no inclination to sit still
Pondering like a person playing chess
Or someone calmly fishing by the mill,

Then words won’t come, like salmon, to your hook;
Ideas won’t infiltrate that vacancy,
Notions to fill a poem or a book,
The gifts of sedentary ecstasy.

     This sitting by the board or by the pond
     Transports you to a higher realm Beyond.

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