POEMS PEOPLE, POEMS!

So today I went to Chapters and bought the most lovely of all lovely books. It's called Good Poems for Hard Times Selected and Introduced by Garrison Keillor. I'm only on page 34 and I'm calling it the best purchase of the year. This is one of those books that I would want my future husband to read to me in the morning at breakfast, or that I would read my children before bed. This is one of those books that I would want to read after gardening and having dirt all over my hands and knees and sitting on the kitchen floor with a large glass of cold sweet tea as the late afternoon sun shines through the window onto me. This is one of those books.

Poems people, poems!

Poems to me are each their own 50 different stories into a simple, little page of letters. You initially read it, and get the basic gist of what the author is trying to tell you. A happy little moral or something to think about. If you wanted, you could stop there and still live a beautiful life. But a good poem will have just one line, or maybe even one word that throws you off. So you re-read it. What does the author mean by all this? Then suddenly, the entire thing opens up to you and you realize that that initial, happy little moral is so much more and every, single word that was constructed on the page is for a purpose: To reveal something to you about your own life, to help you get through difficulty or to celebrate joy with you. And there are so many more things to learn.

Every single word on that page has a purpose.

And the way I see it, every person is a poem.

There's the initial reading. The happy little character, in a happy little world. And you could stop there, shake them by the hand and go on your way living your beautiful life. But then there's something that throws you off. That one thing they said, that one thing that they did. And so you "re-read" them. You look deeper, you ask them questions. What does The Author mean by all this? And you realize that the initial happy little character is so much deeper and complex. Every single one of their experiences was constructed on their page of life for a purpose: To reveal something to you about your own life, to help you get through difficulty or to celebrate joy with you. And there are so many more things to learn.

Every single person has a purpose.

The only difference between a person and a poem is that you can be a part of the person. You can be one of the words on their page. You can be part of the purpose. You can take them by the hand and re-read their own poem to them. You can help them find their purpose. And they can have the same impact on you.

And that is perhaps the most intriguing, most mysterious thing to me in the entire world.

Poems, people, poems.