A Poem Saved Me
The page lay blank
Wordless, muted.
The ink dried to black dust.
Write, just write.
Your tears are ink filled,
Black words ready to form.
The pen scratched and scarred,
The whiteness shattered.
The first words burnt permanent.
Write, let the words flow,
Unstoppable, unquenchable.
Each letter curved containing a heartbeat
Still now, still now, still. Now.
But the words beat a life rhythm,
Still no more, revived.
Write and the poem poured.
A dam breached in flood,
Unburdened at last.
The waters lapped,
Drenched in words and verse
And I was afloat.
Write, write! The words
The rudder, the poem the raft.
Adrift yet a direction re-found.
Words comforted me.
Sentences sustained me.
A poem saved me.
__________________________
Poetry saved me. A grand statement. Melodramatic? Perhaps.
But in losing my daughter Milla in December 2016 I was lost, drowning. My depression and anxiety building. My grief unbearable.
I rediscovered poetry. I began to write. I began to read again. It was my safe place, my outlet, my expression and comfort.
So yes. A poem saved me. And still does.
When life crowds the mind with stress, confusion, disturbance, upset, to take a quiet moment, to read, to escape into a book, perhaps a novel, or for me poetry, can be the most comforting, restorative and peaceful thing to do. But not only reading, the process of sitting down to write - that spark of inspiration can strike like a thunderbolt.
