Poetry: How the Soul Speaks

We cried in church all morning on Sunday and no one wanted to leave. Outside it was cold and snowy and someone we love had passed through that thin veil to see Jesus in the night. We have been waiting for her to go but no one thought it would happen so soon and I can’t seem to write or run or concentrate on much this week. Going to work gives the relief of putting my mind elsewhere and when a patient tells me he likes to read poetry I make a mental note to bring some in for him. So the next day I do.

It’s almost Valentine’s Day, I say. So I thought you might enjoy this.

I place the book that my friend gave me for Christmas last year on the table in front of him.

He sits up straight and the way he touches that book makes my heart beat faster. But it is the look on his face—such surprise—that tells me he is touching a part of himself. He lifts the cover of the thing and runs his hand down one smooth page and he looks up at me and I know. I know he is remembering who he is.

It gives me such delight to surprise him this way because who would expect to find poetry here? Who can find beauty between these dim walls—in the midst of the pain and the struggle of recovering from brain surgery?

So he tells me the story of how he fell in love with books. It starts with a teacher—as they so often do—and how she told him when he was a boy, when you read the words of another you are getting the chance to glimpse into their soul.

Her words were the flint to his heart-fire and he began a life-long love affair.

And poetry, he said. Poetry is the language of the soul.

I carry his words with me and he doesn’t know what a gift he’s given me.

Poetry is the language of the soul.

I close my eyes and let my soul speak.

you

donned love

like skin and the

clear strains of

laughter were your

music. oh, the way

you swayed—knee-deep

in the joy-giggles…

wading around in

I-laughed-so-hard-

I-cried. courage

is the way you

kept breathing—your

heart pulsing life—

filling up the space

all these years; not

a labor…a dance.

I don’t

want to press

your memory

between two

panes of glass—

a faded picture,

brittle rose, lucky

clover between the

pages of a book…

color drained and

stale as cardboard.I

will remember—

your heart a cathedral,

the lift of walking

side-by-side…

the way

you loved has

cast a long

shadow—a purple-

hued path for us

to follow; learning

from your ways

long after you’ve gone,

we wind along the cool

shade of your silhouette

until we find our way

back to you.