If you’ve ever wondered why a poet writes …

I have written hundreds of poems, many that I love

Some, I don’t even think I write, they are kind enough to write themselves for me, and fall into lines that I enjoy and share

They are there in the ups

And there in the downs

Words

Falling into my mind and describing the process of this life that I’m living

Am I the narrator or the actor, the observer or the story? It all plays out simultaneously with my mind switching gears and leaping between roles

The dryer turns noisily in the laundry. It contains two towels, a shirt and probably a lost sock or two

The continual noise annoys me, I cannot block it out anymore than I can prevent the sound of my husband munching chips and turning the pages of the newspaper

So I write these things into the story

Whatever is here

We must accept

To reject it or put it aside is to create aversion and blockages

Let these things come and even more,

Invite them

The crinkle of paper, distant slam of a door in the wind

Let it all come in

And then

Let it go

For this is the nature of writing life’s endless poem

Life

It brings everything to me, placing things to the periphery, the front and the rear

I deal with all that I can see and hear

Accept

Try and perhaps gleen a little wisdom from even the darkest regrets

And then I weave it into words

A tapestry beneath my feet

An ever moving carpet

Is all we ever get

So the only thing to do is to accept that this is life’s poetry

Unravelling

We are given the cotton, the yarn and the colours

Weaving through patterns is how our mind wanders

Writing poetry

A simple thing

Such an exquisite task, making this music sing

And then sitting back, and listening

*I came across an old poem recently. It was a note in my phone written many years ago – the beauty of iPhones and notes that get saved to the cloud.

I don’t remember writing it but I certainly remember the feeling, of sitting by my Mother in the sunshine, she, empty and blank, a husk of human in paper thin skin, but she was still my human and her frailty and tragedy filled me with such a depth of feeling, so much feeling that I couldn’t always keep it inside and sometimes I would just cry

Until I began to write

Which is how this blog began. Not because of that moment, but because of that feeling. That feeling of being so full of feeling that I had no place to put it. So I began to write poetry and suddenly all of those deep feelings had a home.

Somewhere to put them

When you find a home for your emotions and thoughts it is truly freeing. Finding a way to take what is filling you up inside and expressing it creates space.

Having that space creates a buffer and from behind that buffer life becomes easier to decipher.

If you can explain something to yourself, you can make sense of the world both around you, and within you.

If you can take even the worst experience and then carefully dismember it, with burnt nerves and frayed finger tips, with courage and sadness and determination. And then watch it flow out of you and into words that land on a page, you begin to see how life moves through you

And that we are not meant to hold all of the pain and suffering and joy and beauty within us

But rather let it flow through us

Becoming part of the river that is humanity and this collective experience

Not forming blockages and impediments

Within or without

We are here

And then we are gone

And all that we experience and are – all our reality

Becomes

Nothing but poetry

*photo courtesy Pohem Moieni Unsplash