- [Announcer] "Making" is presented by the Coal Yard Cafe in Ithaca, New York.

(light ethereal music) - Driving to a haircut, I spy two small birds dancing against a rainless blue sky.

Hard sunlight, turns them to black silhouettes, as my eyes swivel from road to rear view mirror back and forth to birds up and down.

I glimpse flashes of swoop, partners trading places, rolling around each other as though tethered by bands that shrink and stretch, flying out and in, wings spinning like whirligigs, silent dancing, high in the air, where I dreamed I too once flew.

I am Sharon Ball.

I am a poet and writer.

I have struggled with the idea of calling myself a poet.

I'm in a poetry group.

I have done many poetry readings.

I've had three poems published.

I should not have trouble with that.

But I do.

And I think it's just because I was always the person that supported other people's art.

Turning that around has been a very difficult process for me.

I'm still working on mastering my craft.

The day that I have mastered my craft is the day that I will stand balanced in that identity.

I've been writing poetry, since I was a child.

I didn't know it was poetry.

I was just writing stuff down.

It was a secret.

I would write stuff and I would tuck it away.

I wouldn't show it to anybody.

Sometimes when you wrote what you really felt, you worried about getting in trouble.

I think maybe when I was 11, all that poetry that I had written all those years before, I destroyed it and I threw it all away, because I was absolutely sure that it was no good, that it was garbage, that it wasn't poetry, that it was just stuff.

And so I threw it away and, oh, do I regret that.

I'd love to see what that little girl was writing at that time.

My inspiration comes from all over the place.

And I also have great affection for nature.

I'm interested in what nature does, whether we're looking or not.

I'm always trying to figure people out.

I'm always trying to figure me out, but I'm people too.

A phrase that someone might, something someone might say, and I write that little phrase down.

And maybe that's a first line or maybe that ends up being a line, maybe it ends up being a title, maybe I don't use it at all, but it sets off a string of thinking that ends up being a poem.

And what's interesting about writing poetry is you think you're going to write about one thing and by the time you get to the end, something else has popped up, and you go, "Where did that come from?"

It's like magical.

It's also frightening, because it tells you how deep we go, and that all the stuff that we thought we shoved aside, that we overcame, that we forgot about, that no longer has power over us, still does.

It's like bubbling down there all the time.

And the the poetry kind of helps you access the bubble.

Raindrops sparkling in this spruce tree, after the sun comes out, nature is without ego.

This beauty, that breath-take, those overwhelm.

They are not of us, not about us, not for us.

Nature does not care whether or not we notice.

Ah, but when we do, no mercy.

We create the perception that people of a certain age do certain things, that people of a certain income level do certain things, that people of a certain color do certain things.

The people who lived, who have come from a certain place or have a certain way of talking, do certain things or are certain things.

And that perception is created by our selections.

And each one of those choices adds another layer of context to the story, true or not.

But here I am 75, and I have to separate myself from the perception of 75 and figure out what 75 is when I do it.

I still have possibility.

As long as I'm breathing, I have possibility.

I am trying to figure out what my goals are because they're more than one.

Number one, I wanna live, I wanna keep on living.

Number two, I wanna publish my work.

So I'm working on setting up a publishing company and I decided to go back to school in 2021.

And I am majoring in creative writing with a concentration in poetry.

I'm taking one course per semester.

I wanna savor what I'm learning.

Every step of the way, I learn more about myself.

Every new project, every new adventure.

And this one, I think is gonna bring it all together.

My writing is the one thing in my life that truly belongs to me.

I belong to it and it belongs to me.

Every culture, every single culture, there is someone doing something that is a creative act.

These creative acts, I think, are healing to our souls, to our lives.

And they also represent power.

They are the power beyond politics.

They're the power beyond commerce.

And that's why commerce and politics spend so much time trying to control the arts and creativity, because that power ultimately cannot be controlled.

It lives on its own level, and it is, to me, the essence of life.

So the threat to our cultural life now, it's temporary.

The soul of it is operating underneath all of that noise safe and sound, and always will be.

The arts are everything.

(gentle music) - [Announcer] "Making" is made possible with support from the Coal Yard Cafe in Ithaca, New York, from Beer Properties, and from viewers like you.