Community Poem Part 2 #PoetryFriday

Welcome to Poetry Friday! I am delighted to play hostess for this week’s roundup, which comes to you live from Peaks Island in Casco Bay, Maine. We’ve been having the most exquisite sunsets, thanks in part to some beastly hot weather. Tonight’s, our last, is the grand finale! Wow, just wow!

All are welcome here at Poetry Friday — to read, to share, to comment.

In last week’s post, I shared the lovely Poetry Is community poem participants in my “Playing with Poetry” workshop in July contributed to. And guess what? I shared an invitation to add to our work and our poem has grown exponentially with poetry wisdom from some of you. Now it is a lovely patchwork of thoughts, ideas, and feelings about what poetry is to all of us. Thank you to those who joined us!

Poetry Is

Is it possible for poetry to be memory and discovery?
Come reader, I’ll take you to the sunspots that my mind is afraid of.
We’ll arrive at surprise itself and the journey will be worth it.

Poetry is the music of a whisper,
the shimmer of sun on a stream.

Poetry is our very best words
squeezed into tight spaces.
This is what causes the essential sparks.

Poetry is a particular pleasure,
a welcome word,
a heart sigh.

Poetry is indifferent to time or season,
and mostly requires the quiet.

Poetry is a doorway
a path, a conduit
to reading and writing.

Poetry is the releasing
of emotions, thoughts, hopes, and dreams
into the world.

Poetry is a sun note
opening day across a painted skyway,
a brushstroke of words illuminating a thought.

Poetry is playing with words,
our best friends,
in the sandbox.

Poetry is reaching into the depths–
an excavator of emotions
with gentle hands,
freeing anguish one time,
joy another.

Poetry is goose-bumpy wonder,
heart-piercing pain,
and shelter for seeker’s of solace.

Poetry is soul-feeding moments
of clarity, observation, memory,
reminders, connections, joy and more.

Poetry is music without a tune,
though when you know poems by heart
you can feel the symphony in your own body
when you recite, even silently to yourself.

Poetry is medicine
that heals and comforts,
cures loneliness, and brings friends.

Poetry is an unexpected delight,
like the first chocolatey bite
of an icy fudgsicle.

Even if you never meet the poet in person,
you feel a connection that makes you kin.

Their words linger longer.

Without poetry, what would we do?
It is as much a part of us as our fingers
and toes
and every cell of our being.

It is the air we need to live.

Poetry is a link to the past, a promise for the future,
a moment shared or stolen,
for those who pause to listen, to hear.

What exquisite thoughts from everyone! Many thanks to Michelle, Janet, Jone, Denise, Janice, Linda, Carol, and Alan for joining teacher poets Cherylann, Heather, Jonathan, Juliette, Kathy, and Marilyn. (Do let me know if I missed anyone!)

Thank you for joining us this lovely Poetry Friday. Click the link to join the roundup! And don’t miss Matt Forrest Esenwine’s post here. InLinkz is misbehaving for him!