This poetry post is brought to you by my latest creative game; guerilla stone drops ~ I collect stones from the beach, draw and write on them, then leave them about the place for people to find. Like this:
Maybe all real poetry is soul poetry. And by real I mean not contrived or ‘thought up’. You know, the kind that comes from the soul; just comes out, without you doing anything much except write it down and maybe tweak it here and there.
When I write poems it’s not because I’ve sat down and thought, ‘I’m going to write a poem’. It’s because sentences, half formed and insistent, have whispered in my ear and demanded to be written down and expanded upon. It’s not me that writes them, not really. I think they come from what Paulo Coelho calls ‘the soul of the world’. The part that is all of us, that we all are, the ‘unified field’, ‘universal intelligence’, Source, whatever you want to call it.
It’s like when I give Reiki; I am not the healer or the source, I am simply the vessel through which the healing flows. The vessel through which the soul’s messages flow. When I paint too. Possibly also when I’m messing about in the kitchen.
My favourite poets are channelling Source too; you can just tell. I thought I’d share some with you. {Sometimes WordPress messes with the layout of certain poems. Sorry about that.}
First, David Whyte, recently discovered. His words here speak exactly about the swing between the vast aloneness and the connectedness of everything I’ve been experiencing lately:
Everything is Waiting for You
Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice. You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.
Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.
And of course, Mary Oliver:
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Break all our teacup talk of God.
Could give the Beloved His choice, some nights,
He would just drag you around the room
By your hair,
Ripping from your grip all those toys in the world
That bring you no joy.
And wants to rip to shreds
All your erroneous notions of truth
And with others,
On too many fine days.
Lock us inside of a tiny room with Himself
And practice His dropkick.
To do us a great favor:
And shake all the nonsense out.
He is in such a “playful drunken mood”
Most everyone I know
Quickly packs their bags and hightails it
Out of town.
