How To Write A Poem

Don’t look for the poem

Just exist, but exist attentively

Leave the confines of the room

If you cannot,

You must let the outside in

Open the window, lift the curtains

Stare at the outside you have let in

Don’t look for the poem

Just live, but live mindfully

You would wonder

At how beautiful the new sun is

As it shines through the leaves of trees

Which split its rays into many slender-limbed stars of gold

You would wonder

At the little birds that fleet in and out of the trees and sing as they do

And at the other birds you cannot see but which sing just as heartily

You would wonder

If the birds and the cockerels share a reason

For singing most heartily in the morning

And what prompts the donkey to bray

If you were to write these thoughts down, you would have written a poem.

Don’t look for the poem

Just be present, but be truly present when you are present.

Wendell Berry said once in a poem, that to be a poet, you must stay away from screens, and stay away from anything that obscures the place it is in. I try, and fail every-time, to do as Wendell Berry says. But whenever I put away the screens long enough, I find a poem in me.

You can find more of the author’s work on her blog, YÉMU.