THE CALLIOPE MUSIC OF YESTERDAY

“Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.” — Allen Ginsberg

“For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding: it is the deepest part of autobiography.” – Robert Penn Warren

Recently, at a poetry group, someone asked, “Is the poem personal?”

The response, “All poetry is personal.”

Poetry is our souls laid bare, our hopes, dreams, truths and secrets. It is a vision of oneself mixed with the reality of our places in the world. Poetry is the intricate examination of dust motes in a sunbeam and determining what reflection we cast in the light.

As poets, we tell our truths, our constant joys and secret sorrows. We unearth memories from their shallow graves and explore our relationships. We scrawl layers of ourselves onto paper and offer the words up as nourishment to others.

Poems are more than just words. They are a hand clenching the pen, veins pulsing with emotion, jittery as if from too much caffeine. They are brain cells clicking, brows furrowed in thought, searching for just the right way to convey a feeling.

When you put your pain onto paper it loses some of its strength to strangle. It feels like daisy petals being plucked off one by one. But when someone reads the poem and says, “I know how this feels. Thank you for finding the words I needed.” the petals are reattached and the flower made whole again.

Yesterday is always only a blink away. A smell, a sound, a picture. We are who we were way back when. The words we choose allow us to explain that time, place, and person to the world. We meet our former selves on the pages of time and glory in the reunion.

CAROUSEL

What is the meaning of goodbye?

What does the word signify?

You think you will never meet again

as in two carousel horses

spinning in opposing revolutions.

What has passed will come again.

The calliope music of yesterday never changes.