What to Remember When Writing Poetry

I’ve always wanted to be a poet and I suppose I am, because sometimes I write broken lines on the page and I find myself continually willing to step through the barrier of ‘Who do you think you are?’ to see what happens.

Words sometimes cohere like strange attractors to reveal patterns that bring me deeper. Finding some shape of sound and meaning that pleases me, I am send it off—post it as my gift to the universe. I suppose I should be more careful with creations. I should work longer to ensure only the highest quality. But I refuse to work that hard, so when there’s a spark, I trust that to be enough. (Even when there’s not a spark, I try to trust that too.)

For me, this trusting is the key to creating anything—remembering that there is nothing to prove, we are already OK. Since whatever we do will never be good enough to earn our keep, we don’t have to try so hard. It’s not not caring. It’s just remembering the beating heart has been given and already fills our entire body with the red elixir of life – the energy that sustains us – the life that is us. Whatever our considered opinion on the matter, we are always and nothing but the universe universing—the incarnation of God’s love.

The key to dancing (or writing poetry) in this life is to know that nothing could ever be good enough to earn this love that has already been given. As we consciously receive this unmerited gift of life, then we are free to take chances–to twirl and hop, to leap and stomp or to move so slow that everything appears to be still.  Words come together (or not) and express some fraction of life. And that minuscule fraction manifests the fullness of the universe.  Everything we do, every word we write, every move we make is our perfect love song to the mystery—a deep bow to all that is already.

So, under the cover of the darkness of January, take a chance!  Write a poem, compose a song, draw a picture, make a collage of whatever images and words strike your fancy, glue a few random things together and call it a sculpture. Make something and see what it has to say to you.

Allow yourself to sing the song of your life out loud.

(Over the next two weeks, I will be interspersing some pieces from my archives as I devote part of my mornings to considering how (or whether) to manage everything I have written over the past year.  The original version of this piece appeared 2/7/2017)