Greetings!
"Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution, and the raising of consciousness."
~Alice Walker
Happy April and it's no joke that we're celebrating National Poetry Month! As a poet, I celebrate poetry every day; however, I love the unity of an intense sharing of poetry and the poetic life all concentrated into one month. As I mention in my book,
Writing for Bliss, poetry is the voice of the soul. Poets help to see a slice of the world in a way in which we might not have observed it before. They might highlight details to cast a light on a feeling, an image, or an event. Poetry also helps offer insight into both the human psyche and human behavior, and it is a place where the imagination can roam free.
Writing and reading poetry can also be a springboard to growth, healing, and transformation. When you read or write a good poem you will be forever changed and not the same person you were before. The poems that change us the most are those that touch us intimately.
I hope you take some time this month to honor the beauty of poetry, and share its love and kindness with others. Here's one of my favorite poems:
Kindness
by Naomi Shihab Nye
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
From Words Under the Words: Selected Poems by Naomi Shihab Nye
