Poetry Thursday - poetry on the go

The two new poems I've written for Poetry Thursday are the first new poems I've written in a decade probably. Perhaps longer. (My third posting was of a poem I wrote about 15 years ago.) The last time I devoted considerable energy to poetry was the summer I lived in Oakland, California, when I wrote a poem every morning while drinking coffee on the weather beaten front porch of a carriage house some friends and I had sublet for the summer. After moving to Washington, D.C, I enrolled in a poetry workshop, and then somehow I drifted away from the form. I think I discovered that I had genuine potential but that fulfilling it would take work and it would take risk. I think I realized that there would be many rejection letters before the acceptance letters began and I think I backed away from the challenge.

When I stopped writing poetry I also slowly stopped reading poetry. I can't remember the last time I bought a volume of poetry, and until I found Poetry Thursday the only poems I read were those published in The Sun, which I read cover to cover and back again. So this week's idea to carry carry poetry with us in our pockets or pocketbooks and to read it in quiet moments as a way to bring poetry into our daily lives was perfect for me. I wrote out one of the oldest couplets in the English language:

Oh western wind when wilt thou blow

The small rain down can rain

Christ that my love were in my arms

And I in my bed again!

- Anonymous

The phrase "small rain" has touched me since I first came across this couplet almost two decades ago. This couplet is everything I love about poetry - how so much can be conveyed with so little, if the little is well chosen. Small rain. Two perfect words that say more than entire pages. The small rain down can rain. I can feel the wet on my skin just reading those words. So short and yet it reveals an entire life - I imagine a sailor stalled at sea waiting for the winds that will take him back to his love. I can see his love waiting for him at the window. Either one of them could be saying those words, perhaps they both speak to the wind oh when wilt thou blow?

A small wind is stirring here in my office, carrying pages of poetry that scatter around me like autumn leaves. I gather them to me gratefully and welcome them back.

To see what other people have been carrying around with them, go here.