I Like Poems

It's been a long time since I've written things here or used this space because sometimes I am afraid to write.  Who knew THAT could be so scary?   I didn't....until I made myself write it.

The days have whooshed by me lately, and instead, my soul has dwelt in less life-giving things.  No writing here, and a complete avoidance of what I affectionately called 'the clickety clack', which is to say space to write and the time to enjoy it.  I have felt this keenly.  I do not know why I have avoided it.

I am changing lately, so much, and I feel it all of the time in whatever I'm doing.  Change is shocking and scary and other times unspeakably good.  Wonderful, refining, and life giving.  More often than not it's the woozy feeling of both, which is right now the look of my life.  I don't think you can see it on me from the outside looking in, because of course int he daily 'walking around life' there are many things to do, and I am mostly good at tricking people about these things.  Not always impressive, but true.




What does change feel like right now to you?

I just wrote an entire paragraph about the life of teaching and deleted it because while it's the thing I currently know best, what I really intended to write was that.....

I
like
poems.

I like Robert Frost in the fall and Mary Oliver to motivate me and Shel Silverstein because it reminds me of being in 3rd grade at the library.  I like Billy Collins because it makes me think of my roommates in college and Longfellow for the ways his poems spoke of history.

Aside from that, I don't know what I like because all of these years, I've avoided it.

Poems seemed ridiculous to me, like they were made for other people, even if I liked them too. Maybe it comes with the stigma that if I were to really explain how much I loved a poem, I'd be far too sentimental for every one's taste.  Too far gone, because I am sentimental enough already.  

JB encouraged and challenged me though, and I love him for it.  I saw that poems make me deep down happy.  I discovered that it can help when all of life is in front of you, and the emotion is still stuck in the back of your throat.  (What do you do?  Sometimes a poem helps!) And when I told him that this was all still just a little ridiculous, right, he just said it really really is not.

So now sometimes I write poems.  And I'll keep writing them.
Someday they just might find their way here too.