Song and Poetry

Listen.  Can you hear it?


It is the song of the Earth, the wordless, voiceless song that all living and non-living beings in this strangely beautiful world are singing.  We hear it in the whisper of trees in the breeze, in the patter of raindrops on a lake, in the cadences of birdsong, in the whirling of the wind, in the hush of a lover's voice speaking to his or her beloved, and in the silence of our own hearts.

We cannot hear if we are not listening, and, too easily, we forget to listen.  We become lost in the noise and the tumult of blaring advertisements, squealing brakes, and ringing phones.  But when we become silent, step aside from the rush, and let the patterns of the natural world settle into our minds so that our frenetic thoughts are stilled, we learn to listen and to hear again.  And we hear again the endless song, the songs of all the creatures of the Earth, all of which form the song of the Earth herself.  And they say to us, "You were never truly separate.  We were always here.  The separation was only in your mind.  We were always with you."

We join together in song, and our individual voices, which may sound small and shaky when singing alone, rise in a mighty chorus when joined together.

Letting the song of the world seep into our beings, into our minds and our hearts and our daily routines, we find it harder and harder to go back to living as we were, blind and deaf in a world that is, even now in this cynical age, full of wonders.  Our lives become more open, less stressful.  We listen more, talk less.

And when we open ourselves, we are open not only to the natural world that is outside of ourselves, but also to the creativity that is within us.  For our outer and our inner worlds are two halves of a whole, and when we open to one, we open to both.  If we want to create, we must live, and live fully, no holding back.

When we create, from the heart, it is poetry that is being born.  It may be words, sung or spoken or written, or painting, sculpture, warming meals, gardens, well-constructed houses or bridges, mathematical equations, scientific theories, or anything else that we create with our hearts and our minds, our intuition and our rationality working together instead of apart.  What we create may be simply the time and space to truly listen to and talk with the people we love.  This too is poetry.

To create poetry, we must be open.  To be open, we must listen.  And when we listen, we hear again the song of the world, endless source of inspiration, from which we were never truly apart, except in our illusions.

~~~

(Many thanks to Eli Effinger-Weintraub, who wrote the short story, "The First Song" at No Unsacred Place, which partially inspired this post.)

(Part of 30 Days of Druidry)