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Following the River

Turn on the Faucet
By Andrea Scher 

The river has been singing to me of late. Come with me as I follow her traces…

I read this interview with John Ashbery recently, it was one in an old Paris Review.
He says whenever he wants to write poetry, it’s like a little river that’s always flowing,
and you can just dip into it and write. I think that’s a great analogy.

Bernadette Mayer

If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.
Rivers of living water will brim and spill out of the depths of anyone who believes.

–John 7

If you’re going to be a writer, the first essential is just to write.
Do not wait for an idea. Start writing something and the ideas will come.
You have to turn the faucet on before the water starts to flow.

Louis L’Amour

Ask Me by William Stafford

Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.

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