Celebrating Poets and Their Songs
by Susan Haley
April is National Poetry Month. Although, I’ve submitted several excerpts of prose and article writing to the Fox & Quill, my first love for the written word was born in poetry; the ability that poetry gave a shy and intense young girl to express herself and communicate with others. It became a pattern in my life to spill my voice, my sentiments, opinions, my hopes, dreams, my victories, as well as my failures, onto a page. And often, and as importantly, to ask my questions.
Poetry has afforded me the power of healing, to understand what appeared to be my destiny, a new direction I wasn’t prepared for, a new revelation from sources higher than this earth, and my shared energy with ALL life in this physical dimension.
As moods swung, as anger, joy, or despair embroiled, direction floundered, intuition questioned, I was able to keep plodding even when a step forward brought me back two. By pouring my feelings onto a page and later studying those cries emitting from the abyss of emotion, I was healed as much as I could be and moved forward.
Composing poems allows, even encourages, a sense of freedom, a lightening of burden, an abandonment of shoulds and should nots. Free verse isn’t as subject to the structured rules and regulations of prose and journalism. I often refer to them as the ‘soul songs’ of our true humanity. A paradoxical form of writing, really, as it’s difficult to hide one’s true core within the verse of a poem. For some unexplainable reason, there, we can let it all pour forth. While at the same time, poetry affords the masquerade that allows the expression to emanate. It’s like the actor who eloquently recites his lines from behind the stage curtain rather than in the spotlight. The thought seed has been planted; or the path lighted, while the gardener remains in the shadows if they so choose. I do believe there is a poet lingering in every human being as we all have our soul songs. I summed it up in my one award-winning rambling.
“Stones From the River”
Stones from the river,
battered and tossed.
Thrown,
polished and hewn,
along the banks,
Into the dry museum of experiences.
Stones from the river
Carried by currents,
Dislodged in the storms
To yet again settle,
Sun-warmed.
In shallow, crystalline pools of reflection.
Stones from the river,
Dammed Into barriers by hopelessness.
Rendering foot soles
Bloody and raw,
In the walking of a day’s
revolution of the sun.
Stones from the river
Fossils of the patterns and hues
Of existence
In history and in now
What wisdom they could tell us
Of the future
Simply in the movement.
The river is life,
The boulders, the pebbles, stirred in the living of it.
The museums tossed along banks,
The reflections in shallow pools,
All questions, all answers, revealed
In stones from the river.
Susan Haley ~ 2008
Click here for (next column)
“The Essence of a Poet”
A sense of Divinity nestled in a wisp of humanity,
A mind sense of letters, sounds, dribbled on a page.
Expression reaching far beyond vanity,
More, the Cosmic emanations of a higher sage.
Not just words draped around casual feelings,
Or descriptive tenets labored by a passing muse,
But passions, emotions, facades peeling,
A stripping away of conditioning’s ruse.
They bare a soul sense, a gut sense, their very being,
A sharing of innermost value and wealth.
A word play of thoughtful ponderings, seeing,
Deep into the chasms and valleys of ‘self’.
Verbal energies, composed songs, of love, of Earth.
Soul-felt utterings wrenched from inner store,
Shout quietly in a whisper, of their very worth,
Of the Divinity inherent in their very core.
In poems of the sensual, the playful, the child,
In antics, drama, mindful lyrics of role,
Truths are rivaled only by passions beguiled,
Metaphors of life are sung by a poet’s Soul.
The Emersons, the Whitmans, the Poes and the Yeats
The Brownings, the Angelous, the unknown next door,
The animated flowers and birdsongs within garden gates
The cries for justice, the riveting agonies of war.
To those fortunate to have read them, or heard,
They forge a new path, passing the light.
Regardless, the era, the age, of their words
Memory’s halls will hold them forever in sight.
So utter on, dear poets, your heart cries and fears,
Your dabblings of pen, and your passions’ birth.
Speak on to those who would listen and hear.
Continue shining your light over all of this Earth.
Susan Haley ~ 2007 ~
|
|
|
Susan's book: "Rainy Day People" is just one of her talents. Her web site is full of poems that focus on the natural world and man's impact on it. (www.sucarha.com) |
Susan
Haley
Thanks Susan for the thoughts and wonderful poems... John Wolf
