Day of Poetry

A day of poetry begins with melancholy. A subtle ache for more than what I can give myself. Perhaps it is company, love, affection, happiness- whatever the unfulfilled longing, it is a feeling which cannot be delivered by my own ponderings, and I am left to fill that void with poetic dreams of non-existent ideologies that can make an artist’s heart content. Almost.
I identify heartily with Alfred Proofrock. Coffee spoons seem to measure up the life I often conjure. This morning it was tea spoons that measured up the day, yet little did I know that my artistic yearning would lead to more. As the sun showed over the mountain and the doors of the forest opened, the birds would sing me into the deep. My triumphant entry into the woodland presented itself as a battle against the ever feared yet always embraced experience of the ordinary.
The trees work much as Gothic cathedrals, always lifting one’s views and thoughts to the heavens. I believe they do their duty better. The metaphor of a tree works at a human level that a manmade structure cannot dare to stoop down to. A tree works out of the depths, a Godmade structure that grows and moves to face the toils of the world. The wildlands. The roots of these natural cathedrals reach down, grappling to rocks, struggling through bedrock, discovering waterways. Lifeways! The strength of these roots impress past the crumbling stones and archways of Brunelleschis. The greatest sources of pride for man are outdone in the beauty and simplicity by the natural.
My adventure did not halt at the archways of the forest, it only strove further. The earth moved and shifted beneath my boots. My maroon yarns caught and twisted in the brambles. My walking stick was a surety when my feet did not know. Life is so like a woodland wander. One cannot see the path ahead until one reaches it, and the multitude options for each step exceed one’s abilities to take them all. Choices. Difficulties. Beauties. Inspirations. All can be found in an afternoon walk, yet embracing them requires one to look. Melancholy turned the key, beginning the engine of my search, and upon return from my battle against the commonplace, I found that I had claimed a small victory over complacency. I could say that always present dreams of adventure had been fulfilled for the afternoon, and as I recline, returned to my latter pose, I cannot say that I measured my day in coffee spoons, rather in roots and trees and cathedrals. Little rivers and shallow pools. Blue haze and billowing clouds. A masterpiece. I measure my day in all of creation, and my search to do battle is a search in which I press steadily onward.
My day of poetry was not one of rhymes and riddles, yet that is not of what poetry is made. The day was experience! The day was a fight! It was poetry.