Weight

Grace in short verse.

Photo by Tobias Reich on Unsplash.

Weight

Lone, melancholy falling keys
     and strings, they — tearless — cry.
This humor sinks to my heart, to its beats.
     This weight I will bear. I will try.

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This is not a poem. Nothing was discovered here, no insight gained. Sure, there’s a rhyme scheme, and the meter’s mostly consistent. It’s absolutely verse. But no change of consciousness came about because of these lines, and that pretty much disqualifies it from categorization as poetry as I’ve come to understand it. (More to come on that in a later installation.)

So what are we to call this, then? If there was no discovery, there was at least acknowledgment: a naming of the current state of mind and heart I was in when I wrote it. And that’s something.

I've found honesty a key practice in awaking dragons, and allowing myself space for being in process. Sugar-coating words helps no one, and is an exercise in deception — though there’s certainly a time for tact.

Taking what is within and giving it a habitation on the page can be healing, allowing opportunity for objectivity and acceptance. This early piece of mine documents the few short words that came in a season of situational hopelessness, yet I hope they offer the encouragement that in process is a fine and acceptable place to be. At very least, it implies movement and opportunity to learn.

What do we call this, then, this journal entry disguised in meter? Let’s call it priming the pump for poetry, and for discovery.

Let’s call it grace.