The Soul of the Matter: Poetry is when you feel…

“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” ~~Robert Frost

That’s the poem that inspired my Three Days on Mimosa Lane. Because it’s another book about family and emotional journeys and finding your way through difficulty that mostly no one else knows you’re going through. And that’s poetry to me. I’ve never ceased to be amazed by what the human spirit can survive and conquer and thrive in the midst of. And I never forget, despite my own rocky journey as a child, what family and friendship and love can mean, when you allow the poetry of them into your life.

poetry ink blotI don’t write poetry. Not professionally. But I do see emotion and feelings and how a writer, any writer, portrays them on the page as a unique form of poetry that changes from voice to voice.

I see the same thing in everyday life, as I observe everyday people and families.

How we create happiness and peace, or how we destroy both, is poetry personified.

We choose our path. We choose our reaction to the world. And our choices affect so much more than our own experience. The emotions we invite into our reality echo into others, and we either build up or we destroy the positive energy around us. We add to and give back to the world, despite its challenges, or we merely take, and we take for granted all the good beyond our struggles. We value every moment, and we help others do the same, or we declare that we don’t deserve better–and we limit those we love to the same meager existence.

family heart

I write about family, always have, always will. I write about relationships, always have, always will. And I write about poetry and love. Because, to me and my voice and my writing, it’s all the same.

Despite what we were born into or the circumstances conspiring to challenge use every day of our lives, we choose what or family and love and purpose and poetry will be. We choose which words and thoughts we pull together to craft the emotions that drive us.

THAT’s the story I tell over and over, I think. It’s the journey I’m bringing to readers again in Three Days on Mimosa Lane.

We either love, or our personal poetry becomes a dark, dead-end and yet endless thing.

We chose hope, or we condemn those who love us to share our hopelessness.

We fight to overcome and find that perfect combination of words and emotions and yearning that will take flight for us and our families, until it takes us beyond where we dreamed we could go.

Poetry is an unwritten theme in all our lives, not just my books, as we chose whether to follow either a magnificent vision or a limit-filled, meager existence.

What will your poetry say about you today?

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One Response to “The Soul of the Matter: Poetry is when you feel…”

  1. JOYE says:

    I like reading poetry although I don’t understand it sometimes. My poetry would say I like reading words and how they make up sentences that have meaning.

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