The Poet’s Secret

I recently read a quote from Robert Frost to author Daniel Smythe (December 21, 1940), “If you are going deeply into poetry, give your whole self to it – go the whole hog. Too many take it carefully, and fail. If it is to be your life, make everything else subordinate to it….”

I love writing poetry, and god knows how many poems I’ve read and poets I’ve followed, but I just can’t do that. I can’t dedicate my entire life to just poetry – at least not in the sense of poetry as a  literary form. 

There’s just too much to do, to be, to make, to see, to just dedicate my life to one art form. How can I put the amazing colors I see in every corner of life into words when, in essence, I can mash and paint with  the earth’s actual minerals, mix them with  oils, or with eggs for tempera, or  gum arabic for watercolors. A deep  magic occurs when creating an image or expression of  life in life, no matter what the outcome.

And what of music? The plethora of sounds coming from so many different humans in the history of music can fill a lifetime with a musical score. Not to mention the birds outside my window, or even the slightest sound of  the wind pushing its lips on the window sill for an ominous note. I realize  I’m on the opposite end of the musical scale, but  I love getting out my fiddle to try to play  a half-way decent jig, even though my cat pulls back its ears and looks at me as if I’m a human in terrible heat.

And oh to dance in the moonlight! There have been many blissful moments when I’ve felt like picking up my pen to document a feeling, like when the light hits the darkness in dancing shadows.  But if I choose the muse’s company over fetching pen and paper, well then, I guess a written poem is sacrificed. 

 I suppose trying to capture all of the muses in this short life can be daunting if we consider the  eternal scythe hovering over all our heads. I get glimpses of our mortality if I think a dog lasts no longer than a child’s life, if I hear the fluttering of the moth in the spider’s web, or that time I found our old cat under the mulberry tree days later smiling from her shrinking lips and grating smell. When the hawk flies off with the curling snake wrapped around its piercing claws I figure there are little field mice hiding with relief. I think of all the goodbyes of loved ones, ones I’ve said or didn’t have a chance to say.

There’s something very real about going into the woods empty handed, no pen or phone, just  listening to the leaves rustle an elegy for the coming of fall. The little green fungus lace growing on the oak trees spreads its scent with the wind in the cypress trees, and the colors in the background are lit perfectly like DaVinci’s paintings. Sometimes life can offer a little too much  to confine into words because the world can be overwhelmingly,  or terrifyingly, beautiful in all its details. 

I admire my favorite  poets who have the gift of capturing life’s essence in words and sharing their sensations to their reader. Then there are those who share the meaning of life without a pen. Here in Italy you often hear the spoken  word poesia (“poem”) to describe the joys of being alive, like  questa pasta è una poesia (“this pasta is a poem”), or questa giornata è una poesia (“this day is a poem”), or sei ‘na poesia ( “you are a poem”).  I’ve been hearing these phrases for many years now, from the person who has  been at my side for a very long time. He doesn’t write them down, but I feel he’s got a secret—

      	 
So I ask, What’s your secret? He says, It’s here.
He holds up a cherry so close I’m cross-eyed,
then twirls it by its stem to make it dance.
 
He holds down a branch of the olive tree,
tiny yellow flowers snowing in his palm,
and says, It’s in the liquid gold.
 
Look, he says, pointing to the tiny wax balls
stuck on the bee’s legs. Maybe the secret
weighs her down, borage to borage flower.
 
He whistles an old Neapolitan song I know
about fresh air after a storm, the sun, the sea
and all its inspirational sentimentality.
 
We walk down our dirt road and he hands me
a wild iris, takes a bow, says, Incredible!
and puts his hands back in his pockets.
 
We watch the hawk glide into the woods. I ask,
What’s so funny? He points to the spot with
his chin, smiling at the secret that just flew in.
 
Deep in the dark of night, lying still in bed,
he asks the nightingale from the open window,
How much longer will I hear your song?
 
His eyes reflect a hint of moonlight and I think
perhaps if I listen long enough in the dark
I will hear the answer to his secret.  

((Oiled pigments on watercolor paper, 2022)