we are all made of stars

nothing is perhaps more exciting than finding a surprise of a poem that quickens one's pulse and opens one's heart with a joy in hearing, seeing, feeling that one's own, perhaps until now inarticulatable experience, amorphous but oh so real ideas, have been not only shared by someone else, but captured in a way that sings truth...


i had this wonderful surprise this morning when i opened my inbox holding my poem of the day email from poetryfoundation.org...a new one, from a poet unfamiliar to me. i apologize if any of you subscribe to this email list as well and already got this dose of poetic beauty today but i couldn't resist including it here!





Imagining Starry
by Marie Ponsot


The place of language is the place between me

and the world of presences I have lost

—complex country, not flat. Its elements free-

float, coherent for luck to come across;

its lines curve as in a mental orrery

implicit with stars in active orbit,

only their slowness or swiftness lost to sense.

The will dissolves here. It becomes the infinite

air of imagination that stirs immense

among losses and leaves me less desolate.

Breathing it I spot a sentence or a name,

a rescuer, charted for recovery,

to speak against the daily sinking flame

& the shrinking waters of the mortal sea.


~

how beautifully ponsot speaks of the way in which we can use language and imagination to understand and heal our own internal landscapes. amazing how true it is that by letting go of the will, letting it expand into new dimensions of unexplored size and shape and scope through breath [inhale, exhale] we can alleviate feelings of isolation, of loss. here it is that we map the constellations of our relationships with others and with the larger universe, the "rescuers" who connect us once more by helping us to focus not solely upon what is "daily" or "mortal" but what in us is infinite...