No introduction needed. This poem evolved slowly as I thought about how one can strive to be creative even while the odds of being original are so slim.

Learning

Pride of authorship? Pride in what?
The words?
Most were grunted aeons ago,
Shaped by tongues of countless others.
The image?
What's not nature's creation
Belongs to those who made it first.
And what ideas, but a few,
Stand alone onough to warrant pride?
I borrow to create,
Keeper of locks,
Regulating level and flow,
Admitting or impeding
Vessels laden with ideas, sounds,
Images of imagination,
Until they form a version I call mine.
Then that, too, floats away
And will return, the same and also new,
Enriched by subtle changes,
The stuff of me, the stuff of you.

Charlie Neff