the artist within
there is the soul of an artist within each of us,
one who sees a rightness that can exist
and hopes to make it so,
I look at a magnificent bluff in Utah,
and I see pattern that aches to be noticed,
I see petroglyphs that ache to make it so,
this artist within grasps burgeoning pattern
and feels how it can come together,
upon paper, upon the stage,
within things that we make,
in whatever crafting of beauty we undertake,
with whatever tools are available,
and then it can be so,
for me, words are my tools,
I build frameworks to hold
as much of what reveals itself to me
as I can contain within the net I build with words,
I still wonder about the source of the creative impulse,
something in the universe loves the building
of the random into complexity, chaos into order,
our pink dogwood spent the winter with tight terminal buds,
and now each bud releases the flower within,
to manifest as the flower without,
every blossom is defiance against entropy,
order against meaninglessness,
and, in the noticing, joy should coalesce within us,
we should notice, and mark, and commemorate
what we can know and celebrate
as order and meaning strive hard to birth themselves
into the world we all share,
the artist within can then exult
in every reprise of creation itself
however true or clumsy that reprise might be.
by Henry H. Walker
March 26, ‘26
