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Singing a Poem into Being
The cold told a tale to me
the rain suggested poems
another tale the winds brought
the sea’s billows drove;
the birds added words
the treetops phrases
-The Kalevala, I, “In the Beginning” 1
We’re born to light and water and earth and air
Yet most of my life I cared little for verse,
But somehow words have become wonderful,
Even beloved because poetry -
- Poetry takes the chaos (or apparent chaos?)
Of life, and gently sings it into meaning
Through line, stanza, meter, and metaphor,
Shapes it, loves it, and makes it beautiful.
Poetry is like baptism, perhaps,
Or painting, sculpting, drawing, making music,
Or digging and setting a post-hole just right,
Helping set one’s perceptions of reality just right
And it is beautiful
1 The Kalevala. Elias Lonnrot. Trans. Keith Bosley. An Oxford World’s Classics Paperback. OUP. New York. 1989.
