I've been nourished by poetry these days. Sometimes it's just the perfect line. Sometimes it's the fragility of language and meaning itself. Sometimes it's a place I've been, while other times it's foreign but brings up empathy and compassion in me. The contradictions appeal: the simplicity and complexity of a few words strung together, somehow it really is a comfort.
A link to one: here.
And one typed out with intention - found scribbled with past intention in my journal - here:
Keys
by Nancy Henry
When things got hard
I used to drive and keep on driving -
once to North Carolina
once to Arizona -
I'm through with all that now, I hope.
The last time was years ago.
But oh, how I would drive
and keep on driving!
The universe around me
all well in my control;
anything I wanted on the radio,
the air blasting, hot or cold,
sobbing as loudly as I cared to sob,
screaming as loudly as I needed to scream.
I would live on apples and black coffee,
shower at truck stops,
sleep curled up
in the cozy back seat I loved.
The last time, I left at 3 a.m.
By New York State,
I stopped screaming;
by Tulsa
I stopped sobbing;
by the time I pulled into Flagstaff
I was thinking
about the Canyon,
I was so empty.
Thinking about the canyon
I was.
I sat on the rim at dawn,
let all the colors fill me.
It was cold. I saw my breath
like steam from a soup pot.
I saw small fossils in the gravel.
I saw how much world there was
how much darkness
could be swept out
by the sun.
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