Poems. Images upon images of life experience, all metaphor and all real in the same phrase. Twenty years ago, I set out to write enough poems to publish in one book. Below is one of the two poems I wrote since that time. The one I'm not writing here is called, I Am No Slut and has images from The Woman Who Runs With the Wolves by Estes - Baba Yaga for instance. Written to myself, it served its purpose and needs no repeating.
This one poem still expresses my life twenty years later. I experience its images differently, tis all.
Gentle Sweet Wildness
When did you leave me so alone -
A silent breeze in a whispering pine wood field?
Loving,
Weren't you to be here forever -
A sunset changing the colors of your sky?
Forever is a full moon holding midnight on a swampland lake,
Just as the night ends, is a moment of breathless death.
Then the sun rises on a new day.
Nature's choir chants live.
Soul is Dancing.
Healing Begins.
All One.
Alone.
This is a version. It changes with each reading. The somewhat indigenous people who live in the outer islands of South Carolina refer to that moment of breathless death as "dayclean". I will sit on the porch just before sunrise just to hear this moment: night sounds - no sounds - one chirp - two chirps - many chirps (and maybe a boat leaves the dock), and the day opens to a new opportunity to live a great day!
One poem holds it for now.
And you? What's your poem? How has it changed?
2 comments:
You sent this poem for Christmas one year. I pulled it out. Yes, it has changed - just the ending, though. And "dayclean wending is gone." My poem? Humpty Dumpty. Same words - different meaning now that I'm retired.
I've had your blog information marked since October and read it a few
minutes ago. Very nice blog and I love the poem Gentle Sweet
Wildness. The story about your father was moving. You look great and
it sounds like you have a rich and full life.
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