Feeding a Hunger
The other day I was watching Bill Moyer’s interview with Robert Bly and I suddenly felt this terrible hunger for poetry. It was as if I had been unaware of my own starvation. Listening to Bly reading the poetry, his own, Rumi and others, it felt as if I could not help but be awake. Truly awake and not lulled into an auto-pilot existence. The eyes of a poet revealing in words a vision of the world that my soul understands. When the interview was over, fearful that I would slip back into that sleep state, I started searching among my books for forgotten poetry. My appetite for books has always outpaced my ability to read them. Well, at least in my adult life. I will never forget standing with the librarian in my elementary school library and having her tell me that there was nothing left for me to read. I had read them all.
In my bedroom bookcase I found just what I was looking for, a book of poetry, purchased with excitement and then abandoned: “{Risking Everything}: 110 Poems of Love and Revelation.” I have been feasting ever since.