Why Do I Write?

Why do I write?

I answer with this absolute truth:

My mind has received an open invitation
to a place where it can explode
and become more than just itself;

where it can burst through everything
with the heated impatience of fire--
in a perplexed panic rising
 from the earth to the sky
finding the whole
by spreading the pieces
of a highly combustive heart
that kissed summer like a forbidden lover

I have an autumn home
that was grown instead of built
blessed by the scent of change and chance
fresh out of heaven's shower

Where reason is defied
by a little girl on a trampoline
insisting she can reach the moon ...
even offers to gift me a star,
and when a firefly leaves her hands
faith greets my life

Where a cradled dream
open its eyes for the first time
and discovers mine,
 asks me for its name...
to whisper it
and softly breathe it true

I write
Because a word by itself
cannot define a thousand emotions,
but a chain of them
 can lace around my neck
and rest
a shiny, love-shaped charm
 on my restless chest


I write
 because my soul
has made a promise
to visit a place not of this life.
Because this pen is the only vehicle
capable of taking me there,
and this ink is the only camera
that can capture  images to take back
and show you where I've been.