Dear Writers,

I wish I could give you something. The way you have given me so much pleasure over the years with your own words, shaped into stories that make me laugh. Or think. Or feel.

The wisdom in you is old beyond your years.

The child in you is still very much alive.

I wish I could give you something. Some words you can store away in your heart and revisit from time to time. Words that will help you steer your wondrous adventure through life.

Every writer should make friends with a poet. So I shall share with you a poem by Mary Oliver. She is a poet worth befriending.

~ Your friend, Lorraine Merrill
Founder, Power of the Pen

Like Magellan, let us find our islands
To die in, far from home, from anywhere
Familiar. Let us risk the wildest places,
Lest we go down in comfort, and despair.

For years we have labored over common roads,
Dreaming of ships that sail into the night.
Let us be heroes, or, if that’s not in us,
Let us find men to follow, honor-bright.

For what is life but reaching for an answer?
And what is death but a refusal to grow?
Magellan had a dream he had to follow.
The sea was big, his ships were awkward, slow.

And when the fever would not set him free,
To his thin crew, “Sail on, sail on!” he cried.
And so they did, carried the frail dream homeward
And thus Magellan lives, although he died.

~ Mary Oliver