Learn and Live Like the Dust
Nature is a riot of life.
Sometimes you just have to look, or breathe.
Like family, like friends– the feelings are all around us,
comforting us, even choking us.
he winds of change blow and make us blind,
deaf and dumb sometimes.
It moves us from place to place,
in thought and character.
The seeds of our deeds push forward
and the magic of comfort zones can sometimes make us forget.
Shards of disagreement can cut.
Shards of ignorance can cut deeper still.
Nature is not uniform.
Life in a petri dish is not “normal”.
There is no dust.
There is no
true
life.
Let’s learn about what is going on in the poetry arena. Who’s who? What’s what? Stay tuned as I bring to the light the nuts and bolts of what is going on in the magical land of life imitating art imitating life through the word. Transformative Language Arts and Right Livelihood for me include sharing the beauty of the written word and spotlighting the glitter in the dust around us.
Let’s start with the classics. Who are your favorite authors (because some of them are the better poets, with the exception that their framework is just a bit more, long-winded). For me, I love Dean Koontz (his descriptions of sky in many of his books take my breath), Zora Neal Hurston, Alice Walker, Pablo Neruda, JRR Tolkien (his songs), Clarissa Pinkola Estes, and then my head gets muddy thinking about how many more there are and how I justify them as poets. I am sure that more and more will come to me. Certain movie scripts do the same thing, and of course singer songwriters a-plenty come to mind. There is no end to the Transformative nature of a great song– The Songversation “I Am Light” by India Arie is a great place to start, for a nice treatise with song, conversation, journaling, and poetry. It’s like dancing in poetic dust clouds. I won’t ruin it for you. But for now, I’d recommend catching up on your local area live poetry events. I’m going to dive in my dang self.
With words, song and prayer,
TMV