A Poem a day - 2nd installment

Back when my friend Tina was 'infecting' people with the bug for writing a poem a day she wrote this one which I love:

Where to start

I wouldn't know where to start

says Carol, when I ask

if she'll write poems

after she quits work. You start

with the taste of the tea,

the look of the kitchen, the view

out the window, the dream.

Start right here, with the sound

of a quiet house, faint rainbeat

on the roof, flicker of candle deep

down in a blue cup, the feel

of a wet shirt from feeding baby geese

and pulling out soggy pooped-on hay

while rain splashes down and the geese

cheep in confusion at the disappearance

of their ground and the intimidating pile

of new dry hay, like the sudden arrival

of a forest. Start with the thought

of listening to the day, of chronicling

the invisible currents as the days pass,

since the  currents are not apparent up close

but the maps must be drawn up close

before we can stand back

to see the way the river runs,

before we see how it was

to travel into this new place,

this motherhood, this remembering,

before we can peel

the layers of the story back

and look at how the river has carried us

when we didn't know how we could carry

one more thing.

                             copyright Tina Tau,  2000

You as Poet!

There is a mystery that will awe you waiting at your fingertips for you to discover it - it's the writing of poems. This past week I've been infecting people with the itch to write their own poems. I know they're hiding inside of everyone, maybe a little shy, but there all the same. Anyone can write a poem - they're so accessible! Yes, they're waiting inside you too.

You can write one anywhere - in a cafe, on the bus, while waiting for a meeting to start, in bed (I write many of mine from that quiet sanctuary). 

You can write a poem on anything - in a notebook or on the back of a restaurant receipt. On a napkin or on the fly-leaf of a book (if it's your book!). You can write a poem while on the bus, or in the kitchen, or in a waiting room. You can write it on any subject you please, on the mundane or the profound, the every day or the unique. You can choose a personal perspective or a global one. Where else do you get to be so totally in command?!

Yup. A poem a day invites the Holy into your life too. Are you up for it?

Try it out and let me know how it goes - I love to read or hear other people's poetry. It takes me into a world I might never visit if not for their poem, and that's a precious gift indeed.