Cupids Dart...or Discovering Richard Blanco

There is a hard edge...a chilling touch that winter brings to my being...it feels so different from the way it looks. Today the snow is soft, falling silent in large fluffy flakes. There is no wind. Just the steady soft falling of large flaky snow...softening the branches of trees, erasing any dirt...grit...dog mess...making the whole landscape clean and awaiting its potential. The whole landscape is a sheet of white paper begging for me to make my tracks. Last night Stephen and I went to listen to Innaugural Poet Richard Blanco, read from his work. We sat high up in the balcony where there were many empty seats. Looking down into the auditorium showed a large crowd gathered to listen to his poetry. I could relate to so much of what he expresses. No. I am not an immigrant to this country but as a child, I always did feel that I landed amoungst a family of folks living in a city that I struggled to relate to. I felt like I spoke another language...suffered from a severe sense of being misunderstood. I listened to his loving portraits of family who couldn't provide him with what he needed. And yet...he provided what he needed for himself. After all...as a poet, he has been heard and appreciated and called by the President to speak his heart into the mainstream...and the mainstream recieves him with love. A community celebrates him and his success...lending his purpose credibility...affirmation...and a soil fertile for further development.
I applaud his tender honesty and feel myself looking within myself with an eye that has a slightly shifted perspective. After the reading and the chorus of Happy Birthday sung by the audience at the end of his questions and answers...I left the auditorium with an arrow piercing my heart with sadness.
I see myself scribbling poems and hiding them amoung the hundreds of pages of writing that fills my journals. I remember the hopeful self that sent out poems for publication...and the rejected self bravely tacking up rejection notices and pretending not to be affected. I remember the angry self that sang choruses of "I don't care". I remember the sarcastic self that feathered her edges with bright scathing comments and critisms of herself and others who couldn't understand the need to put feelings into word pictures...revealing a vulnerability that I feared would cause my heart to stop beating altogether. One year...it nearly did stop beating...and since then, I have veered away from poetry...like a captive bird beating its wings against the bars of a cage, I eventually gave up. Feeling like my efforts were in vain, I became the silence...the soft dusting of snow...trying for something deeper...I look out the window to where the swing sits beneath the birch tree. I think of Robert Frost and the Swinger of Birches...and being in a heartspace of no language, I wonder at the beating of my heart...the new obsession to create felted birds out of soft wool roving...and I think back about the poet Elise who has enjoyed a small amount of success with certain poems. A cardinal lands in the birch...and it's sweet notes pierce the silence like a bright watercolor painting. I loved listening to Richard...reveled in his success as America's Inaugural Poet...and in doing so, I managed to find a tenderness inside myself for the poet that is me. So what is this aching in my heart? This pierce of a dart to my bleeding heart? This discovery of Richard Blanco? It seems to be the wild voice of my own soul...realizing the need to sing for the sake of song...and if someone hears and understands...so much for the miracle of communication. A wholeness is born. A seed is planted. A cardinal lands in the birch tree. And a hand claps in the wilderness. Singing Happy Birthday to Richard awakens the birth of my inner poet...a wild thing with feathers and a song.