Show Me a Day When the World Wasn't New

"So, like, what do you write about?"

I present, to you, the most common question I'm ever asked by someone who vaguely knows I write poetry, but has never read it. You're probably familiar.

Surprisingly, that question is always difficult for me to answer. What do I write about? The basic answer is that I write about relationships, but that seems trite. Any thirteen year old with a journal can write about relationships. The more complex answer is that my poetry is a weird blend of crazy words I'm in love with and a half-memory or two that inspires a fictional relationship that may or may not be anything close to what I've personally experienced. But that, to the non-poetic friend, is a little too complex. So, I give up and dig deeper into the weird little world that is my poetry, further refusing to figure out my own personal theme. The easier question, if I were able to control the general inquisitive population''s questions, would be "What inspires your poetry?" I can give you a list of authors, recommend a few chapbooks, and just generally explain to you that words are cool, and that I like to play with them.

Where, specifically, does inspiration come from? I'm not the first person to ask that question, and I certainly won't be the last. Inspiration is this beautifully finicky thing; one minute, it's gleefully poking on the back of your head, and the next, you're begging desperately for it to come snuggle you as you finish a desperate fifth cup of coffee. Inspiration can be a gradual nudge in the right direction, or a sudden breath that makes you feel like you've never really been breathing before that very moment.

If I were, for the sake of a thought process, to narrow my own personal inspiration, my poetic mantra, my answer for the question I'd prefer to answer about my poetry, is this:

"Show me a day when the world wasn't new," a quote by Sister Barbara Hance, was the most effervescent thing I'd ever seen printed on the front of a notebook. Show me a day when the world wasn't new. The simple beauty of it, the gentle encouragement to find the "sparkly spots" of life that are worth paying attention to; what a marvelous way to go about writing. If I could mold this quote into a tangible trinket and carry it in my pocket every day or wear it on a chain around my neck, I absolutely would.

So, fair reader, tell us: what inspires you?