Postcards from the Imagination

I wrote a poem last night, and this morning I still like it well enough that I may actually submit it for publication sometime.  A word on what that prospect means to me.  I don't write for the sheer love of writing, and I wouldn't do it if I thought my poems would never see the light of day. Reading is my first and true love. Writing is a kind of compulsion. I write because I have a lot to say, but more often than not the process itself is frustrating. There's always such a wide gap between what's in my head and what ends up on the paper. I write because I've packed a lot of living into these past three decades, and if the experience is fodder for poetry, then life seems less absurd. I want to publish because there's a massive conversation going on in the pages of literary magazines and books--and I feel like I have something to contribute.  That's not to say that poem I wrote is terribly ambitious, or terribly good. But it's a step. A big, fat baby step!