Inspiration wanes

I have been playing long spring tunes on my flute and the deep signs have brought the Gosling Five, red-winged blackbirds, cowbirds, sparrows and people by to listen. My heart longing for a spring hug.

For over three weeks maybe more my inspiration, like a fading rainbow or fading light in the sky, had waned. Although I have endless pools of realness inside to bring forth. I needed a push to open the gates of that realness.

Today it happened, three youngsters approached me as I walked up the hill to the cell block and one said; “Are you Spoon Jackson?”

I said; “You don't know that.”

“I heard you play the flute.”

“How do you know that is me?”

“I read it in an article in the Bayviews.”

Before I could answer another youngster pointed to my flute that I was carrying in my folder.

“You have the flute with you.”

We all laughed and I had to confess. The young folks' interest and questions were real.

A student in my poetry class approached me at our last blues/rock country concert and said an older poet he is in contact with on the streets, who used to come into San Quentin in the late 1980's said he knew me and knows my work, and that I was a master at what I do. That bubbled my inspiration up even more.

Finally my geese family, The Gosling Five helped open the pools of realness, and I'm writing again. I am never without poems songs articles or stories to tell. Sometimes I feel so low and I must go deeper inside to tap into that realness, and bring forth the text. The manuscripts inside my poet's heart and writer's soul. It is like a rainforest full of undiscovered creatures and plants in tune and in flow with Mother Earth. Sometimes a long journey must occur.