Words Written and the Ash that Remains

"If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry."--Emily Dickinson

Someone like Miss Emily Dickinson writing about how brutal writing can seem is profound. She was able to write the most beautiful verse that has been imagined and to think that it made her feel that way makes me wonder why I try to write. Writing does feel that way to me at times. But then other things in my life can make it seem like the top of my head was taken off. Not only has it been taken off but it has been muddled with by meanness, touched by kindness, blessed with friendship, filled with surprise and wonder, stirred with desire, mixed with confusion and other universal tribulations that are part of the human experience. But I seem to always find laughter and love that repairs the soul that resides in my skull.

Leonard Cohen, one of my favorite singer/songwriters said "Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash." Leonard is "write" about poetry, and art of any type that has that certain daemon inside of us wishing to express itself to others. A daemon that wants to burn our artistry to a beautiful ash. And I know also that what I write is just graffiti of my muddled mind, and writing it is a way to free my thoughts. Send them into the ether to dissolve among the other verses of the many, many other poets.

My poem for today:

I am fermenting

My mind, my spirit,

To try to hear the

Difference between

The sounds of

Trees and stones.