POETRY: Song of Ilmarinen

My apologies to my readers for not posting much lately. Thinking about the publishing world and trying to “measure up” to just about everything I read got me really burned out. Sometimes it’s good for a writer to stop and smell the roses, so to speak, to remember why it is we got into this business in the first place. I still love writing, always have and always will, but it is not the words themselves that matter to me. Words are just the symbols. It is the meaning behind those words, that often elusive meaning, which fascinates me. The written word has the power to define our identities, both culturally and individually; it has the power to define our most cherished values and beliefs; it defines not only what we live for but what life is. Anyone who considers writing “out there,” as something apart from “real” life, is truly blind. Most of all, I love the transportive power of fiction. Life is short and as far as we know, we only live once, but through fiction we can know infinite lives.

Now here is a poem I wrote about the Ilmar. It expresses my sentiments not only for this fictional paradise but also gives a sense for what naturism means to me.