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Tuesday, April 23, 2024

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 memory,
a shared experience.
Maybe you will do a mental double-take,
realizing 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.

for my prompt at What's Going On - an open link to celebrate April Poetry Month.

12 comments:

  1. That is just beautiful, Sherry. You have definitely given good reasons for both reading and writing poetry. I feel the same as you expressed in your last stanza. I think we will ALL be 'found' again in our poetry someday by those who do not read it now.

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  2. Or by those who do, occasionally, or without understanding.

    I found a side of my grandmother I never knew about, as a child, when I inherited a manuscript copy of her one published poem.

    Pris cilla King

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  3. Beautiful... that last verse really hit me... it would be a better world if people kept a poem in their pockets!

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  4. So beautiful Sherry. "Perhaps, if you give it a try, / it will surprise you, connect / with a feeling, a shared experience." I love these heartfelt words of the poetry lover, urging others to give it a try.

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  5. Oh lovely, Sherry, this poem for our "pocket" that carries its creator in its words. I loved the peace of this stellar image: "two eagles, circling,
    wind-surfing the thermals." -- It held my attention, carried me away.

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  6. Heartache and poems are indeed intertwined.

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  7. "This is your poem.
    I want it to speak to
    that part of your heart
    that has walked many miles
    to reach it." As distant as that and as close as in a pocket and in our hearts. Always, Sherry.

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  8. Lovely words and i love that you can capture a persons heart here. Beautifully Written.

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  9. This is so beautiful. And I am sure someone will come find you.

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  10. Sherry! Did you hear? Brave Little Hunter (our favorite little Orca calf) managed to swim out of the lagoon at high tide yesterday! Wanted to share the good news with you since you first alerted us to her desperate plight. Oh such wonderful news in a world full of bad news! Read more here:
    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/killer-whale-orca-calf-lagoon-vancouver-island-bc-free-1.7186129

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    Replies
    1. I did hear, Dora, with such amazement. She is a brave little hunter indeed. Now to manifest her pod coming to get her.

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