Reverence + Compassion

It’s poetry month, I’m writing every day which as a poet sounds like something acute to breathing but the weight of being alive is distracting. Opened Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott today because I felt my wellspring drying up. She calls out that to be a writer one must be reverent and approach every character with compassion which struck a chord with me. The character of my poem deserves to upmost amount of compassion, no matter the topic. Digging to find meaning in the messiness of the subject is sort of the core of what writing comes down to, I think. The poetry prompts I’m working from are fun, they’re interesting, and I like the mechanical nature of a form and trying to create within a structure but I think what the pieces may lack is compassion. Probably can lean into the reverence more as well, I get such joy in bringing to the surface the mystery of something and showing the reason to honor it.

As I sit typing this out, the screen door is cracked enough for the dogs to come in and out, I’m watching the sun change across the pile of rocks in the backyard. The air is warmly reminding me there is rain coming. Between the branches of the trees I can see the foreshadowing coming to fruition. I balance on the cusp of change, a precipice with only a single path forward, into the rain. The music of the rain starts to smatter the skylight like whispers of my name, I fold myself in a low pressure system.