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Friday, April 15, 2022

A Poem for Your Pocket

 


When I'm looking for light,
I read poems.
When I'm fleeing heartache,
I write them.
Maybe I look out my window
and see some small puff-ball clouds
slowly moving across my morning sky,
or two eagles, circling,
wind-surfing the thermals.

This is your poem.
I want it to speak to
that part of your heart
that has walked many miles
to reach it.
Perhaps you don't read poetry,
thinking it a country of no resonance
for you. Perhaps, if you give it a try,
it will surprise you, connect
with a feeling, a shared experience.
Maybe you will do a mental double-take,
realising that words can dance,
sometimes - albeit infrequently -
so nimbly across the page,
like young Jack leaping the candlestick
all those many years ago.

This is your poem.
If it bores you, no worries.
This poem's feelings cannot be hurt.
Like the tired heart
that composed it, it has seen enough pain
to not need to go down those roads again.

Keep this poem
in your heart's pocket,
and, one day when I am gone,
come back and find
me in it
once again.

Inspired by Poem for People That are Understandably Too Busy to Read Poetry by Stephen Dunn. Sharing with earthweal's open link. Heavens, has another week gone by so fast????????

9 comments:

  1. So beautifully moving, Sherry! A poem of acceptance and fortitude.

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  2. Interesting....write for yourself and if it strikes a chord and connects with another that is good and if it does not that is OK too.Real freedom is not being concerned if you are remembered or not when you are gone
    Its the here and now that matters

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  3. It'll be remembered. I often don't read in depth and comment online because I print poems out and read them later. Sorry. I *do* read them.

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  4. what a lovely poem. You captured the essence of poetry here. When I read about two eagles wind surfing I remembered seeing a similar thing. Suzanne - Mapping Uncertainty

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  5. Feel like I should print this and give a copy to all those who refuse to read poetry...without even giving it an honest shot.
    Perhaps you don't read poetry,
    thinking it a country of no resonance
    for you.... beautifully written.

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  6. If we are all bits of the same sky, then a poem is a reflection of our selves, no matter who wrote it (though some learn to write with better reflective surface.) A good poem (like this one) shows the smile up in those clouds. Lovely Sherry -

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  7. This is my poem, to cherish .. keep in my heart .. forever. Thank you.

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  8. This is absolutely beautiful, beautiful, beautiful writing, Sherry. One does hope that after one is gone people will come back and find us in our words. I hope you are working on another anthology, or add this to your memoir!

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  9. i very much admire this poem, Sherry ~

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