Thinking and feeling.

Poetry's been creeping up on me. Perhaps because it's a way to focus, like meditation, and not get swept up in the sea of words and wondering cascading through my mind. I do want to attempt navigating through the swirling ideas and select the bits that I can apply to an essay about hope and change (no, it's not about Obama!).

Sometimes, surveying the wreckage that is our world, the damage that we inflict on one another in seemingly indefatigable cycles; I think, if I love well enough I can help. Other times, I despair. During despair, if I can remember how I act when I believe, there's still a chance that the step forward needn't be followed by a fall back (perpetuating the myth that it is the despair that is more naturally valid). "Faith, hope and love abide, but the greatest of these is love." Without hope though, can love live?

Present stabs at elucidating my thoughts result in a frustrating amount of omissions and overwhelmed dismissal of the multitude of seemingly necessary tangents that wrap themselves around the central thought. Hence my inclination toward poems. Poetry has a tendency to leave itself wonderfully open to sparse language and broad interpretation. The following began during a walk on my usual trail that winds through the woods behind Berea College:

***

Love is stalking me
not creepily
playfully
clandestine.
Shuffling,
several steps behind
like a friend
setting up a surprise.
I keep my eyes
winding up the forward path
winking at skeleton trees
I won’t interrupt Love
reticent rogue;
becoming, being
it’s wonderful, mysterious,
approaching self.

I lightly kiss
the soft spreading earth
with skipping steps.
Love lingers.
It will sneak up
getting closer and closer until—
“Boo!”
“Oh my gosh!”
I exclaim,
“I had no idea I was falling in love!”
I smile to think of it.
Oh man, the stupid grin on my face.
Sun, the rascal,
acts casual casting
shifting light
sighing color.
Pretending its not romantic
I nearly bust with laughter

I’d love to share this joke
but choke back the urge
to speak
and spoil the process.
so I play a game with love
(while letting it be)
I walk with slow dragging steps
then fast
and
stop.
“oh, what an interesting beautiful place,”
I audibly muse,
touching rough bark
with fingers tips
eyes swallowing what there is to see…

Love is,
well, taking its time
for a reason
I am quite sure.
Still, a little peek
a discreet glance
a 180 just to check, I see

nothing.

Was it wind?
Brambles whispering
gossip about birds
and bees?
My own feet perhaps.
Oh, but no
no, no—
Love, haha!
Sly sneaker
you got me just now
but I know.
In the end,
I will tell the joke with confidence.

***

(Feel free to offer critiques, I know I can use all the help available when it comes to poetic compositions.)

And there are these little ditties I made from poetry magnets at 3rd Street Stuff coffee shop in Lexington:

***

She saw good
from dark
what can that mean?

***

Cool round moon
nest those
who cry.
They are nowhere,
slow to get home.
They may grow
to flower
after time.

***