A four-poem year

I like to keep the things I write so I can go back and consider who I was when I wrote them...at a distance...like an anthropologist. It is easier to investigate my faults from space rather than in the midst of committing them.

Today, I went back and read the four poems I wrote this year.

Yes, it's been a four-poem year, which attests to the emotional drought that I have been living in. Usually, they pour forth, no matter how shitty or rough. But this year, the universe kept them in reserve - I'd like to think it was so I wouldn't bend and twist the words to create thoughts that had no business being in the world. Sometimes the muse silences me for good reason...so my ideas have time to simmer and become something worthy of the page.

I wanted to share those poems here, however. They tell a story...fragmented, but clear enough. And I want to share them because they are a good springboard for the life vision I am currently drafting in my head.

This is the dotted line I have travelled this year...something like a dark, primitive hiking trail that has been allowed to grow over and lose itself to time. I'm not sure what order the poems were written in, though I am fairly certain "Tired" came first. I also have a suspicion that I was challenging myself to follow poetic forms, hence the forced rhymes of the final poem. But the sentiments are accurate.

Today, I want to create something new, dressed in a bit more hope.

The First Poem of the Year

I sit in the quiet,
amidst gray skies and promise,
my internal landscape
uncluttered and waiting.

So much unwanted baggage
has been moved out,
papers and furniture
piled in the yard
and burned into the soil.

This house is open;
only the bones,
strong and capable,
remain.

There will always be history
sleeping in the walls,
memories whispering
in the wood...
maybe even a distant sadness
wallowing in the well.

But there is space for
something new.

The creaking floors beckon-
a softness born only of experience.

The crows yell secrets across the wet yard
and land on dormant branches.

And life surges just below the dark surface.

Night will give way to morning,
and I hope
I will find you there
at the door...

waiting.