As True in May as it Was in April

I once drove 200 miles over bumpy back roads to get to the place Naomi Shihab Nye was speaking and it was worth every pothole. That day she told her audience that we should all make time for the writing of poetry because doing so would keep us in a very distinct relationship with language. Her  own relationship with language seems so natural I sometimes feel like she's standing right beside me when I read her. Take the poem “The Art of Disappearing,” which I distort slightly by quoting only in part and  as if were prose:“When they say 'Don’t I know you?' Say No…   If they say 'We should get together' say Why?.. It’s not that you don’t love them anymore. You’re trying to remember something too important to forget. Trees. The Monastery bell at twilight. Tell them you have a new project. It will never be finished… Walk around feeling like a leaf. Know you can tumble at any second. Then decide what to do with your time.”I sure hear that, waking today in this perplexing weather, torrents in Tennessee and Mississippi and hot and muggy here in the precincts north of Boston, even at 6am, not at all like our typical early May morning which is  normally moist, sure but as as cool as a corsage. As for our time it sure is limited, though only the real truth-tellers dare say so. It's kind of a forbidden topic in the perpetual adolescence of this age-denying culture.Nye says a  a young man once said to her, “Here’s my address, write me a poem.” And she responded this way:

Once I knew a man who gave his wifetwo skunks for a valentine.He couldn’t understand why she was crying.“I thought they had such beautiful eyes.”And he was serious. He was a serious manwho lived in a serious way. Nothing was uglyjust because the world said so. He reallyliked those skunks. So, he re-invented themas valentines and they became beautiful.At least, to him. And the poems that had been hidingin the eyes of skunks for centuriescrawled out and curled up at his feet.Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give uswe find poems.

In the name of National Poetry Month just past I'd sure like to try doing that. And wait, is that a passing train I hear? Or is it the monastery bell?  I'm feeling more like a leaf every second  here.....muggy May morning in the precincts North of Boston