No one showed me how to write poetry.
\nI discovered it on my own.
\nLike life, no one showed me how to live,
\nit came through windows,
\nthrough the lattice of a crib,
\nin darkness when no one came.
\nIt came when I saw a bird
\nmoving on the wall, a shadow.
\nAnd life was a tree without flame,
\na dance without music,
\na hand disembodied from itself.<\/p>\n
So I grew into life,
\nas if it were waiting,
\nholding a door,
\nletting light stream through some blind,
\na curtain.
\nAnd like poetry it was full of faces
\nand color,
\nand showed me a place to be still,
\nto walk.
\nTo count sunrises and night-falls,
\nstretch time into a memory
\nof flags and roads.<\/p>\n
It was the smell of the world,
\nthe touch of a feather,
\nthe imaginal visions of clouds and water,
\nand I invented nothing.
\nI needed only to listen and hear,
\nsee and feel,
\nand the world invited me to be
\neverything it was.
\nIt gave no reason, no explanation,
\nno truth.<\/p>\n
It gave me, simply,
\nthe gift of becoming anything I wanted,
\na sea and I became an ocean,
\na river, and my blood flowed serpentine.
\nUnder a sky of infinite extension
\nwithout effort or prayer.
\nThat is the story of my becoming,
\nto inherit a universe.
\nIf I die,
\nit can be no more.
\nThere is nothing in heaven to contain it.
\nIt is free as I am free,
\nyours, mine, and no one\u2019s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
No one showed me how to write poetry. I discovered it on my own. Like life, no one showed me how to live, it came…<\/p>\n