When the wings leave the body...

I love mission statements. I know a lot of people who don't, but I love them.
I love the challenge of defining who I am and what I stand for. I could think for days, months - and do - on the topic. I could philosophize while staring at the Ocean, alone, for hours, brooding and praying and meditating, only jostled to awareness by unseemly passersby - social dog-walkers and opportunistic beachcombers, cutting through my dreams with the cheap butterknife of loud talking and general clamour. Solitude is the highest quality blank canvas I can ask for, it allows me time and space to unfold my thoughts toward the creative, let them fall away from the upright and adroit thinking of the thick, glacial layer of daily responsibilities.
My alone time, when I get it (not often) is my time to hear my voice. Sometimes, if I'm lucky, it's God's voice, if I'm being completely transparent, that becomes the creative voice. Then, when I'm connected, it pours out of me. Everything is an inspiration toward my art. Ideas, solutions, everything is speaking to me, giving me clues and radiating energy which is creativity. Sometimes these moments are fleeting, like a sudden, whole-body-mind-soul-knowing that is gone as soon as it appears... leaving me in a state of longing for more.
One day last week I went for a run, a favourite time of endless thinking and inspiration, and as I ran I looked up and saw a crow flying ahead of me. The jarring of my feet on the ground altered my vision for less than a blink and the crows wings seemed to leave its body for a titch... it lead to this poem:

"From time to time
the Raven's Wings detach
for a fraction of a fraction of a broken second
Her measured breath
pours smoothly out -
I take note. And falter
only in thought
As it interrupts an eruption
of feeling for something,
unowned,
by me."  -  Lee Cripps'19

So solitude, for me, is the key to Creativity. Time to let it surface, resurface and form. My Studio gives me that. And Nature, the greatest Creation, give me that. And time, to think, to look, to notice, to breathe.
Gives me that.