Living in the Sky

Living in the Sky

Its blue pool holds cool contrails

and clouds of all kinds,

plus moon and birds,

pole vaulters and sky divers,

and heads beyond counting.

Who are you and who am I?

Spirit and body, heart and brain?

Poet, artist, mother, friend?

Cat and dog, death and life,

and a hummingbird hovering

in our flowers as water plays

in the fountain -

it’s all alive

under the sky.

*********

In a way, I don't write poems - it usually feels like I'm writing down poems as they come to me when I sit down to write one. It feels like inspiration, in a simple way. But now that I think about it, I'm wondering if writing an email or a web post is any different? I decide to write a poem, and then I just start writing. An idea for a blog post comes to me and then I just start writing to learn about what that idea is about. I want to send an email, and then start writing with the urge to connect. I go back and make revisions to what I say, and think about whether I like what I'm saying. But overall, writing a poem does feel more like "pure writing" in the sense that it comes to me from a place that is more alive in some sense.

I often have a similar experience if I'm reading a poem that I resonate with, or look through the photos I've taken with my iPhone. How much am I the "creator," and how much am I the artist and how much am I the assistant?

As I read this poem after some time of being away from it, the sounds and rhythms of its words seem very musical: blue, pool, cool, hummingbird hovering, all alive. Poets call these similar sounds (there, I did it again!) consonance. But don't let this brief English teacher lesson dampen your experience of the music of language itself.