So, poet friends, if you needed a little pick-me-up, this is for you. And if, like me, is bugs you just an iota to think of poetry “making a big comeback”, I’m with you. Some of us refuse to believe that it ever went away. Look closely. It’s baked into sooo much of our cultural diet, we just call it by other names. Poetry. Incognito!
That said, hurrah for good news like a well stocked life raft in a stormy sea of bad news. Long live poetry!
Life is Poetry: A daily doodle by yours truly, and an eternal truth by the powers that be!
Life is poetry.
Except when it isn’t. Like when it’s more of a broken record or an abscessed tooth or a tropical storm with hurricane potential.
But at it’s best, today for example, life is poetry.
Sometimes life rhymes. The message may be as difficult interpret as a summer mirage, but for a glimmering instant we stumble upon mesmerizing clarity.
And when I glimpse the poetry I’ve learned to step aside. Or sing along. Or dance.
I’ve learned that ignoring the poetry is all too easy, but unhealthy. Unhappy. It’s alright to sing off key or dance to my own rhythm. What’s important is diving in. Or yielding. What’s important is being open and receptive to the poetry. What’s important is embracing the poetry.
Each of us lives a life that expresses… Every thing we do, everything we are, expresses… What message are you giving the world, through your actions, how you live, how you treat others, what you accomplish, how you choose to be, every moment of every day?
Are you an angry rant? A ballad? An epic poem?
Perhaps a sonnet, a limerick, a haiku?
If your life is a poem, what do you want it to say? What would you rather leave out? (zenhabits)
Here’s one poet’s answer:
What’s your answer? If life is poetry, what are you expressing? What’s your song? What’s your dance?
That image above is one of the “picture poems” I included in 40×41: Midlife Crisis Postponed and it combines contour drawings that I made in 1994 during my final year in college with abstractions from photographs that I took in Peru in 2011. I’ve previously posted elements of “Contours & Artifacts” in Choice (June 4, 2012) and Wonder (December […]
