I have chosen Chris D. Aechtner´s poem, A Reminder: To Be, as a metaphor for how to live life and influence the choices I make. It´s not easy. I don´t always get it right. 

Click here to read why Chris' poem resonates so strongly with me.

A Reminder: To Be

Those of you with a unique voice,
with a vision painted outside the lines of over-regulated cadence and rhyme,
I implore you to continue exploring a core
that is fearless in writing against the grain of convention --
for this very friction is a sandpaper helping to perpetually re-invent
yourself by smoothing your raw, unfiltered passion
into a timeless chair in which people of the future will sit in
while reading your poetry ....

.... and their brows will crease, their eyebrows will arch into gates
where sighs of enlightenment will pass through,
for they are reading poetry that has not lost its novelty,
nor is it mimicry: a despondent, washed-out version
of 20 million other identically tired poems already written and read.

If you feel yourself being sucked down by the undertow
of homogenization, fight against the current, drag yourself onto shore,
let sunlight percolate pure word-intentions from the nucleus
of your ancient psalm-writing ancestry.

Your ancestors left behind DNA building blocks,
disciplinary examples and practices
with which to construct mitochondrial drift
that bridges together the past and future
into a runway for you to take-off from
after the training wheels have been removed,
and gain a bird's eye view of what was,
what will always be sacred but not yours to build a mynah nest in
once truth's marrow is tasted from its winged divine inspiration --
a bird's eye view lifting above carbon-copy complacency.

To always be the freedom that manifests your luminous originality.

                                                                                        Chris D. Aechtner

This and all of the other key photographs on this site have been taken in or near to Ocotal, Nicaragua by Osman Rivas