Poetry Can Fill an Empty Vase,

 

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Linking with Shay's Word Garden Word List --Joy School

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I am a poet and a mystery,
Each day myself as in a glass I see:
Creator and created fused in one,
Sun that makes night and night that drinks the sun.
~John Gould Fletcher

 

Certain poems are sharp like an iceberg

 floating on an evaporated sea,

whispering sounds of the ocean from a conch shell

with a message as loud as a scream.

They take us somewhere far yet close as home

 with the soft touch of a special lover,

then tell us how to fix our deepest ache,

 like a devoted mother.

They conjure up my brother’s hardest punch

or my father’s long-lost voice.

Some poems carry the whole weight of lifetimes,

yet the lightness of a single choice.

A poem can transfix or move us,

it can narrow, or expand the views we hold;

give us spring’s spray of flowers

 in the midst of winter’s dismal cold.

They stir the cauldron of memory,

like a witch crafting a certain spell,

leading us to forgotten secrets

that we never planned to tell.

Then they open us like a wrapped-up gift

with a remembrance made brand new,

again, witnessing the birth of grandchildren

and the graveside service that came too soon.

I keep an empty vase in the kitchen

that once held the flowers for your grave.

Poetry has the power to place it back in my hands

holding the newness of grief, I knew that day.