The Crystal GazerI shall gather myself into my self again,
I shall take my scattered selves and make them one.
I shall fuse them into a polished crystal ball
Where I can see the moon and the flashing sun.
I Shall sit like a sibyl, hour after hour intent.
Watching the future come and the present go -
And the little shifting pictures of people rushing
in tiny self-importance to and fro.
- Sara Teasdale
I love poetry. I love poetry by women. It took me a while to find this one by Sara Teasdale - (thank you Google.)
I think I was around 15 years old when I first started to write poetry. I have no idea what prompted me. No one else in my family wrote poetry, and it was never a topic of conversation. In her later years, my mother wrote poetry, too.
What is it about poetry that it provides a method of 'release'? It's a way of expressing something that touches us, impacts us, in a creative, sometimes allegorical manner. It's a picture painted with words.
Creativity - An original means by which humans relay their responses to inner and outer experiences. (I just made that up, but it sounds good to me.) Dictionary.com describes it thus: "to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations." (That's good too.)
For me, it's a way to express an emotion. A catharsis, a celebration, a tribute or a purging. That's probably universal to all poets.
Even chickens.
