In my earlier years, the allure of poetry was always strong. So, when asked to write essays in high school English classes, I would sometimes submit poems to tell the story. However, some teachers welcomed my creative approach with praise, whilst others didn’t appreciate rule-breaking behavior.
I continued to write poetry well into my 30s. Then, I stopped.
Reinspired to Write Again
Recently, I’ve been re-inspired by the founder of a facilitation course I’ve been taking. Tara Mohr has shared her magical poems during this global pandemic. Certainly, poetry can lull our nervous systems into a calmer rhythm. And, it can remove us from fear and transport us into another realm.
As Mohr says, “poetry can connect us to a more intuitive place in ourselves, a place of vast knowing – the deeper place in us that finds meaning and hope even as the mind races or panics.”
Moreover, as I finished a recent blog to share 8 essential strategies for your pandemic survival, I forgot to include how words can help us during times of fear and struggle. But, indeed they can and when in the form of a poem, we can delve inward to find calm.
During these trying times, people have been forced to adapt to a slow moving lifestyle. Tara’s poem, ‘The Rhythm’ is about slowing down.
Therefore, I wanted to share it with you in hopes that it will offer respite from this challenging time. Enjoy it.
THE RHYTHM
In any creative feat
(by which I mean your work, your art, your life)
there will be downtimes.
Or so it seems.
Just as the earth is busy before the harvest
and a baby grows before its birth,
there is no silence in you.
There is no time of nothingness.
What if,
during the quiet times, when the idea flow is hushed and hard to find
you trusted (and yes I mean trusted)
that the well was filling, the waters moving?
What if you trusted
that for the rest of eternity,
without prodding, without self-discipline,
without getting over being yourself,
you would be gifted every ounce of productivity you need?
What would leave you? What would open?
And what if during the quiet times you ate great meals
and leaned back to smile at the stars,
and saw them there, as they always are,
nourishing you?
There are seasons and harvest is only a fraction of one of them.
We forget this.
There is the rhythm that made everything.
The next time you stand in the kitchen, leaning,
the next time a moment of silence catches you there,
hear it, that rhythm, and let it place a stone in your spine.
Let it bring you some place beautiful.
– Tara Mohr
Isn’t that lovely? Do you write poetry? Do you have an appreciation for it? I’d love to know.