On Coming Back to Poetry

For Seth, my blogger poet friend, with great thanks. I hadn’t thought about blogging poetry. I don’t know why. I’ve written poetry all my life; why not here? Writing this today was like drinking a really good glass of wine on a hillside with all of summer in bloom around me. 

 

I’d forgotten

the way

poetry, it rolls off

the tongue and circles

the soul, the spirit,

washes them in

language, some kind

of beauty.

I used to think

poetry must be the language

of God because

you know, the angels, they

sing.

Poetry is

how a writer

sings,

on paper with ink or even just

in the mind.

How did I

forget

something so fundamental?

I wondered this as I

washed last night’s dinner dishes in

the morning

light, soap and water running over

my hands in clear, bubbling

streams.

And then I

realized,

suddenly, like the sun

breaking over the trees, I hadn’t

forgotten–no, because poetry is

a way of seeing

of hearing

of living

of abiding and I

abide

in poetry. It

is never truly

absent.