I’ve been trying to add more poetry back into my life. I would say the last few years have been somewhat of an anomaly as far as poetry writing goes for me. I haven’t written hardly any, and if that is a sign of anything to me, it’s a sign that I’m not doing well. I have turned to poetry since I was a teenager to package up all the feelings that felt too big for sentences. That felt caged inside of regular language structure (I have never been one to write sonnets or any form poetry, yet poetry has always called to me). It has always been a refuge and a release for me.
But I haven’t been writing poetry regularly in probably five years.
I say that is a sign that I’m not doing well, but really I think it’s a sign that part of me was broken in the last few years. It’s been harder for me to see the beauty in most things. There have been moments, glimmers as people like to call them (to me, glimmers are the moments when I feel the poetry of the moment), but it hasn’t felt like a natural piece of who I am anymore.
Now I could abandon that part of me. I could say, that is who I was, but that is not who I am anymore. And maybe it’s the part of me that hates being told what I can and cannot do fighting back, but I refuse to give it up. I know exactly what led me to this place. I refuse to let the extremely difficult moments and hurts of the last five years take away a piece of me that I love.
Enter lists. I think lists are one of the easiest ways for anyone to reintroduce a little wonder into their lives. To find a little magic between and in the hard moments of the day. It’s a poetry exercise that I’ve seen used a couple of different ways, but if you’d like to try it I’ll talk about two.
First, just sit and write down everything that you can sense with all of your five senses. For me, right now, I can hear the hum of the fridge and the tapping of the keys on my keyboard. If I listen carefully I can hear something outside that might be sprinklers. I can feel the couch bending beneath the weight of my body and the press of a fuzzy blanket over my legs. I can see this screen and the mess of daily life on the counters. It’s all empty at the moment, the children and my husband still sleeping. I can’t smell anything at all but I can taste the morning in my mouth. The way it tastes when you’ve just woken up and haven’t taken a drink yet.
All of that together might not mean anything to you, but to me, it takes a regular moment and makes it a memory. A snapshot pressed between the pages of my notebook or in this case, the glass of my laptop screen. To me, that is beautiful. And of course, you can leave it just like that. You can, or you can edit it down or expand the things that mean more to you. I’d probably add more about how the stillness of the morning feels hopeful, how the mess of yesterday left on the counters is beautiful when I slow down and take the judgment away from it.
Second, list the things that make you happy. The moments in recent memory that have brought you joy. My husband and I have a practice of sitting down together every Sunday and doing what we call couple council. We go through six questions and the first one is What brought you joy this week? My running joke answer is that I’ve never been happy in my life because when we get to finally sit down, it’s nighttime and the kids are in bed and I’m generally emotionally exhausted from the day. It’s hard for me to remember anything that has brought me joy from the week when I’m running on empty emotionally. A list like this (inspired by Andrea Gibson), helps me to remember the glimmers and it makes me love my life just the way it is. Not the way that it will be in five years. Not the way it was five years ago either. The way it is right now. Messy and imperfect in so many ways.
Your list will look different, but here is mine:
for the way my son sings “I’ll take a turn and then I’ll give it back” over and over
for the way that the mama robin hops around the grass in our row looking for food to bring her babies who keep getting stuck down the window wells
for the flowers that are still blooming, different than the flowers that were blooming last week or last month
for the way my husband kisses me and tells me he loves me when he gets back into bed after going to the bathroom in the middle of the night
for the way that I know which child has opened their door in the morning by the way they release the handle
for the way my step-mom made sure they stopped at our house on the way to Lake Day on Saturday because I forgot the life jackets, and she could tell just from the text I sent about it
for the way my mother always shows up early to everything and saves us a seat
for all the trips to grandparents houses this summer, to swim and to play so that the kids could get out of the house
for the way my mom makes salads that always make me feel nourished, body and soul
I could go on and on. Lists like this remind me of the beauty. I used to be able to see it so easily. Lists like this formed themselves into poems without me asking them to before. Maybe they will again. I’m not sure if poetry is a muscle you can build up or a talent you’re born with, but either way, I think anyone can do it. It doesn’t have to look beautiful to anyone but you. I find the more specific you can go, the more people will connect with it. Which seems counter-intuitive, but is true.
I invite you to try it. Just make a list. A list is so much less intimidating than saying: write a poem. But it is, your list is a poem.