In my early years of experiencing poetry, I always thought it had to rhyme and have specific stanza in some sort of orderly fashion. Much of what I read once past 14, seemed so esoteric and confusing. I would wonder, what the heck did all that mean cause people were saying it’s good and amazing and …. well, very little of it made sense to me not even if I urged myself to read the poem over several times. I was turned off and dismissed it. Except for Dr. Seuss, cause he was playful and rhythmic and comprehensible in a totally entertaining way. right?
My first real feeling for poetry came in my late teens with Kahlil Gibran and his book The Prophet. Everything about his words touched me. The spirit of his writing, his story telling, the lack of rhyme, the flow, the human connection to being connected to each other; I felt pulled into something grand and meaningful in a way I guess I was ready to ‘hear’ and be engaged in. I have given that book to many people over the years.
Poetry that moves me, seems to be the melding of nature and the human Spirit. The metaphor found in what is outside of us living inside of us. The magnificent connection to what might seem unlikely, and yet is perfectly aligned with some kind of Alchemy that makes stars out of dirt and leaves. The beauty in the asymmetry of life and the rising of love from the heart’s remembrances.
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There has never been a time I have not loved you
Even in the despicable face of your violence and insanity
Love resides, I just forgot in the fear of it
Fear and Love suffer with no embrace
Until I love the fear away in my awakening
I will find a way to Love the fear away
When the earth cracks open, and the sea consumes,
and vortex of wind sucks away life, and
Sun gives no relent for weeks.
And you, swallowed the seasons in their terror
to gather and spewed them from your pain and fear
in every way the ‘dark night of your soul’ could
I will love you anyway.
Love is the way to peace. It’s the way through fear.
I choose love.
