The Poems Left Behind
On my walk around the Lake-Pond this morning I discovered an iron heart, no bigger than a pea, in my vest pocket. I had just sat down on the old Stone Bench when I reached into a pocket for a pen. I found an iron heart instead. The pen was snuggled behind my ear, as it often is. A habit ingrained from my days spent on a carpentry crew. I tend to forget I put pens behind my ear, a good nine times outta ten, and it typically takes me a solid five minutes of searching before I finally realized this.
The iron heart, as I said, was no bigger than a pea and its surface was rough. I held it for a few moments, rolled it between my fingertips and studied its stoic presence. Then I put it down besides me and went about my regular reading and writing routine.
When I finished my final Thought-Poem, about the iron heart, I got up, hopped away from Kotter as he shook off the pond water, and began to amble back towards the house. After thirty steps or so, well on the trail home, the thought of missing something occurred to me.
I looked back at the old Stone Bench. Sitting there was the iron heart. Iron on Stone, I thought, makes for a nifty title but an even better metaphor. A representation of a deliberate desire for awakening. A willingness to be bold, to be brave in the face of our fears and doubts.
I nearly went back to grab the heart, the gathering impulse is strong in us, but that thought was quickly replaced by another more urgent one - better I leave it there. It’s a poem than I could only hope to write. An iron heart and an old stone bench, it’s living, physical, real. Best I don’t meddle.
And it’s these poems we leave behind, the poems we let be, the ones we don’t massage and manufacture that are often our greatest works. The poem never spoken, the poem lived simply. An iron heart and an Old Stone Bench. My words would only obscure the beauty. Leaving them there to simply be was the only poem worth telling.
Further Reading
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