UNCOVERING THE RIGHT PATH


Snow drifts outside the windows of the car as I drive home from work. Left early to avoid slippery roads and rush hour traffic. Thankful that my old fashioned work ethic doesn't interfere with my sense of safety.

I'm listening to the CD "Clear Mind, Wild Heart" by David Whyte and coming to my senses. I have always known I am a poet. Even my license plate says so. I've been writing poetry since I first held a pencil and reading it with the fervor and love of an impassioned woman. So why does it take the thoughts of this Irish poet and philosopher to validate who I am?

I have written novels, and keep trying to convince myself that in order to be a recognized and successful writer I need to focus on a novel writing career. But that's not where my heart and soul live. They thrive here in the cadences of poetry and the images that rise in my mind as I listen to the words.

Yes, I have been working in a respectable field for over 25 years but this is not who I am, it is only what I do. Whyte talks about the exhaustion one feels when pursuing work that doesn't feed the heart and soul. I can relate.

Back at home, safe from the slippery slide of my all weather moccasins on the slick snow and ice, I spend some time "working from home." Now I shed the exhaustion of that work and don the cloak of poetry. Images emerge, words link together like prayer beads, and my heart opens. Life becomes more of who I am and less of what I do. I feel light and my mind is clear. I know what I am supposed to be doing.

I have several of David Whyte's CDs and they sustain me as I commute too and from work, wasting precious hours better spent pulling poetry from my soul and unwinding it on the page. His voice, and his pattern of repeating lines of poems two and three times as he reads, carry me along the road toward home.

Home is a warm and cozy apartment full of love. Home is also between lines of poetry, mine as well as other poets, and therein lies peace and a sense that I am doing what the work the world needs from me. I am free. I am content. My heart slows, my breath evens out, and my soul sits back and rests in the knowledge it has brought me to this place of poetry, a place of prayer, a place of warmth despite the icicles forming outside my office window.

each snowflake
a poem
dreams flutter
to the ground
pile up like love

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Story Behind Every Face

Writers are frequently asked where they get their ideas for stories or poems and the answers seem endless. Sources range from dreams, to news stories, to the ephemeral muse, to strange voices in the night. I never know the original source of my story ideas but I don't go looking for them, they seem to seek me out instead. They find me, grab me, reside in me, until I finally agree to write the story. I have notebooks filled with ideas for stories, poems, essays and art pages and if I had 24 hours a day, every day I'd never have enough time to write them all. Ideas are everywhere, at least for me. There are stories behind every face I see. Faces of family and friends. Faces of strangers in coffee shops and colleagues at work. No one is storyless. As the stories around me reveal themselves I see that this world is filled with stories. You never know what dramas--triumphs and defeats, joys and sorrows-- live behind the faces you see each day. Sometimes the stories come out of hid...
Read more

WRITING AT 30,000 FEET

I discovered a writing secret on my recent trip to LA. In the 757 aircraft the pressure equalizes, the lights dim, and the white noise of the engines is so loud it feels like it's coming from deep inside my own body. I've heard the safety instructions, eaten my take on board lunch, since sandwiches on the plane are too costly, and I've drunk enough water to keep me from getting a dehydration headache. I have also read several chapters in the novel I brought along on vacation and listened to Adele's album on my i-pod. There are several hours left of this cross country flight. I take out the spiral notebook I am using to write first draft chapters of my novel and here is where the secret reveals itself. Stuck in the plane at 35,000 feet about mountains and streams, nestled into the narrow, even for me, seat of the plane, strapped to my seat with few distractions, the story comes to me like a film on a 3-D screen. My characters' voices speak in my head, the movements...
Read more

CHALLENGE FAILED

No one likes to admit she failed, but in failure there always sleeps a lesson waiting to be aroused. I set out to post every day for the month of June based on one writing prompt or another. I wanted to write twenty minutes a day--a story, poem, or essay--and post it here. But as John Lennon said so well--life is what happens while you're making other plans. What lesson was asleep in this recent failed challenge of mine? Of course, the lesson is when you commit to something you need to follow through, but we all know that. And it is significant to the writer because you can't publish if you don't write. But there is another lesson that perhaps slept a little more deeply. The lesson, or question, of finding time to write so I can follow through on my commitments. I did find twenty minutes a day to write--exactly where I'd left them each morning. I've been a writer of "morning pages" a la Julia Cameron's suggestion in her book "The Artist's ...
Read more