write a poem a day for a year

endlessly the skies fly past
the sobriety echoes through
and the chilling winds crush
the seedlings of hope

weeds, though, they are
and they emerge from the depths,
crushed though they remain,
trampled into the grime

but endlessly, endlessly
the seedlings will writhe
until the stem peeks into
the endless sky

and a leaf will wave to
the sun-kissed world,
and the endless suffering
will end

hope springs anew
then the endless struggle resumes

I write for a living. And I get paid to read poetry…not my own, but other people’s. Heck, I get paid to read it out loud once a week. Other people’s poems and my reflections on it. And ever since I started working in my field and had to produce 2000 words of my own a week, I’ve stopped writing poetry.

I got the idea to do this after reading Wendell Berry’s Sabbath Poems and I thought about writing a poem every Sunday for a year. And then I got ambitious and decided it would be “way more better” as my dear Hungarian friend Eva says, to write a poem every day. And that’s when I decided I couldn’t do it. I can barely make myself keep to my meditation practice. I have to bribe myself with strong coffee just to get through it…some days I stand at the counter waiting to push the plunger on the French press and call that meditation. I need all eight hours of rest or I’m falling asleep at my desk after lunch. Getting up early enough to write a poem every day, especially when I consider the foibles of perfectionism, seems impossible. And yet…I list it. Start date to be determined.