too wonderful for words
A reflection by Robert Thiessen, May 2017
“Words are too wonderful for words. The vibrant translation of things to ideas”. (Mary Oliver, poet) The right words can blindside you with their beauty and meaning, and you gasp. This happened to me recently when reading David Whyte’s poem “The Journey” in which he describes a line of geese in flight above the mountains “painting their black silhouettes on an open sky”, and then this great line: “Sometimes everything has to be inscribed across the heavens so you can find the one line already written inside you”. My heart felt something when I read this – a longing for which I had no words. This is what good poetry does, it bridges the gap between the word and our hearts. It somehow holds the mystery of our being alive, of what can’t be said but only felt as experienced. Indeed, the poem is the experience itself, not merely words describing a subject or event. But I find poetry requires a different way of reading. For example, poetry is slow, so I have to slow down and stop the inner chatter and static. Then I have to listen for experience, which requires the sort of generous listening that all good conversations are made of, the quality of being curious and vulnerable, the sort of listening that is not just being quiet but being present. The simple ordinary daily images used in the poetry I’m now reading by Mary Oliver, Rilke and David Whyte, are a reminder to wake up to all that is around me waiting to speak to me. And that everything waits for me and wants to speak to me and through me, to come alive in me and through me, even in the briefest moment of a smile on a passing face – which might be my own!
Here is a poem from David Whyte that describes the effect good poetry has on us “in the silence that follows a great line”:
The Lightest Touch
Good poetry begins with
the lightest touch,
a breeze arriving from nowhere,
a whispered healing arrival,
a word in your ear,
a settling into things,
then like a hand in the dark
it arrests the whole body,
steeling you for revelation.
In the silence that follows
a great line
you can feel Lazarus
deep inside
even the laziest, most deathly afraid
part of you,
lift up his hands and walk toward the light.
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