When he was alive the great song writer Leonard Cohen treated his audience to a recitation from a piece still in progress; he began:

Listen to the hummingbird
Whose wings you cannot see
Listen to the hummingbird
Don’t listen to me

Now, the completed hummingbird song appears on Cohen’s posthumous new album, ”Thanks for the Dance.”

So, let’s say you haven’t yet heard the new album. As a creative writing exercise, why not write the next four lines you would like to see in the song? Then, at some point, you can compare what Cohen wrote with your own offering.

Please write the song that flows from your heart.

What would be in your perfect dream house?

Everyone needs a safe place, or safe haven, they can go to when they need to catch their breath and find a few moments refuge from the stresses that come from outside or within. For me, such a place has always been the public library which I would retreat to as a boy to get away from the turmoil of an unhappy home. I was always happiest among the book shelves. Other times my safe haven has been my kitchen table where I write my books or read my beloved books. Sometimes, it is a quiet corner in a museum.
Share with us: Where do you find your safe havens — what places or people do you retreat to in search of peace and safety?

When I read that the ivory-billed woodpecker, once thought to be extinct, had been seen in Arkansas, I thought of the words in a beautiful poem by American poet Emily Dickinson in which she wrote:”Hope is the thing with feathers. — that perches in the soul…”
Share with us: How does ”hope” look to you? What are the things that give you hope? What are some of your own hopes?
Write about them and remember what you write so you won’t ever forget hope, no matter what life brings to you.