About
I would love to live like a river flows,
carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.
John O'Donohue
I didn't see this coming. I was not looking for it. I was not trying to be a writer of poetry or of anything else for that matter. One day in the spring of 2020 the poems just started coming and I began living in a cloud of inspiration and creativity. It has been a mysterious arrival. I let them come through me and I often did not know the whole of what I had written until I read it for myself afterwards. When I write a poem, it is always when I am in a state of being greatly affected, and that emotion may be wonder, oneness, gratitude, humility, love, vulnerability, grief, among many others. I might witness something during my walks in nature, or a memory visits me, or I am stuck and ruminating upon a personal issue. Simply, I am moved and then moved to write. And it feels as if the words and phrases are right there for me in the moment--a strange effortlessness experienced by someone for whom writing has been dependably deliberate and agonizingly effortful. I rarely make edits after the poem is down, sometimes only revisiting to change the title. I write free verse as this formlessness feels most natural to me. I hope you will find and feel the flow of what I write because it was written in a state of flow. I hope it feels as easy for you as breathing.
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I had not read much poetry since those junior high and high school classics that we ALL read--Ozymandias, The Chambered Nautilus, Thanatopsis, To an Athlete Dying Young, The Road Not Taken, My Last Duchess, Dulce et Decorum est, Do not go gentle into that good night, and, of course, all the crafty Shakespeare plays. Heaven knows, I did not seek out poetry over the past three decades since then. But, wow, in the past five years have I found some real gems to treasure! Walt Whitman makes every one of my cells say Yes!, to what I am not sure--life? love? myself? All of it. O my soul. Then there is Mary Oliver, asking What will you do with this one wild and precious life? And Galway Kinnell. Ellen Bass. Terry Tempest Williams. William Stafford. Marge Piercy. Their poems pierce me and make me feel and it seems that is what I am needing and looking for these days. Experiencing poems is valuable even when I think I some bigger interpretation is eluding me, that I am lacking in comprehension. I shared T. S. Eliot's quote--Genuine poetry communicates before it is understood.--because a poem can speak to you, do something to your spirit and you don't even have to feel the pressure to "get it". You might never get it and still you love it or need it for different reasons. You will know because it will affect you, perhaps change you, loudly or imperceptibly, and you don't have to explain this to anyone, not even yourself. The communication can be that powerful and mysterious. For me, writing and reading poetry are spiritual exercises leading to expansion, affirmation, truth, and freedom. It is my hope that my poems are able to offer such discoveries to you.
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Please sign up if you wish to be informed when I post poems to this page. I have included the poem below, "Poetry" by Pablo Neruda, because it illustrates how I also felt when poetry arrived in search of me. All the best to you and may you continue to hold the welcoming spirit of curiosity as we continue exploring this river of life, sometimes alone and sometimes together. Share what you find around these bends with others, in your own way, and I will continue do the same.
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Poetry
And it was at that age … Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don’t know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.
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I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.
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And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.
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Pablo Neruda