A True Story About Poets

Their stories take root in me

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

I met a poet who tells me that spring is agony for her. Spring is a season of loss, the recurring time of year when loved ones had died. She sees flower stems emerging from the soil as fingers of death. Her anxiety spikes and she has trouble sleeping.

A therapist told the poet to get her hands deep into the soil, to plunge up to the wrists in dirt and feel around. To plant seeds and saplings and tend to their growth.

She did these things. And now, she tells me, she manages spring beautifully. Her anxiety has quieted. She coexists in peace with the greening all around her.

And she writes poem after poem.

That same day, another poet—or would-be poet—steps to the microphone to share how much she appreciates hearing all of us reading from our work. And how she’d like to read a poem out loud some day. But she probably won’t, she confesses, because she is, in her words, “a coward.”

I want to approach this would-be poet and place a gentle hand on her shoulder and steer her into a chair for a quiet conversation. I would tell her to put her hands into the soil, to feel around, and let the dirt speak through her, encourage her to claim an alliance with all growing things—including growing souls, her soul.

And I would suggest that planting a flower, or a tree, is like planting a poem. Tend it, water it, love it and it will love you back. It’s yours to grow, and once grown, to share with the world so we, too, can fall in love once more with spring.

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Spring can really hang you up the most. This will help.

WRANGLING THE DOUBT MONSTER: FIGHTING FEARS, FINDING INSPIRATION