It all comes back to poetry. Life. Love. Loss. Sex. Death. Passion. Spirit.
What if the only language we ever used was in the form of poetry?
Imagine what the world might look like then. I believe in cycles, patterns and rhythms.
This past year poetry has come up again and again as a theme.
Poets have long been a source of inspiration for me- in relationships, work, art, healing- you know, life.
From the early nursery rhymes sung to me by my mother to the first haiku I wrote in the second grade-
I think it had something to do with a purple bicycle. From the classics like Shakespeare, Whitman, cummings,
and Thomas to the mystics like Rumi, Meister Eckhart, Rilke and Hafiz, I have had a love affair with poets for
as long as I can remember. I always say I would have dated Pablo Neruda or at least had a passionate affair
with him- that man knew how to write about women.
As a woman, I could write a timeline of my life with poetry. Those early nursery rhymes, the first love poem sent
to me, the Emily Dickinson poem a friend sent when my mother passed away, the poems I
wrote when I fell in love, when my heart was broken or when I have been so moved
and inspired by the pure deliciousness of life. I've included my most recent efforts here.
Life. Love. Loss. Sex. Death. Passion. Spirit.
-melissa b zeligman, 2008
Walden Pond/Easter Sunday 2008