A Foggy Day.........
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
Carl Sandburg,
A foggy, damp day. I always like foggy days. You look out the window and strain to see outside. You can make out shapes but they aren't quite clear. You can almost see. The atmosphere takes on an almost otherworldly glow. Normal objects look strange and even a little threatening. Trees loom out of nowhere reaching out to touch you, bushes glower at you from the side of the path. Silence surrounds you. Dampness seeps into your bones and chills the heart, making the warmth of home all that more welcome. There is a mysterious aura around fog. It always makes me a little pensive.
Poetry can say, in a few words, what entire novels try to portray. (And that dear readers was a completely unintentional rhyme! 
)
My favorite poem is "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost. I remember going to my grade 10 English class and seeing it written on the blackboard. It was left over from the class that had been there before us. There was just a fragment of verse left and when I read it I was transfixed. I asked my teacher who the author was and made a point of finding and copying out the whole piece. That poem started my love affair with poetry.
I scoured second hand stores and garage sales for poetry books. My thirst was insatiable. I devoured it all, modern, ancient and in-between. Lyrical poetry and humorous poetry. I was fascinated by the fact that by using just a few well placed words and entire idea could be formed, an idea that would take a novelist pages and pages to convey. I loved the sheer beauty of the language, the music and the rhythm. I adored the way poetry seemed to grasp how I felt about nature and the world around me.
Then I decided to try and write. I began to express myself and my feelings in poetry and have been doing so ever since. Most of my work has been private until this year. I think poetry, more than any other kind of art, is intensely personal. It is hard to share something with others that comes from so deep a place in your heart. I don't think it has anything to do with people liking or not liking it, or even people understanding it. I think it is the fact that each poem contains a piece of your soul.
Writing poetry can be frustrating, but ultimately deeply gratifying. Sometimes you have a thought or idea that you long to express, but the words will not come.(I have a file folder full of those! 
) Sometimes you start something but feel it isn't complete, it isn't quite right, so you wait until the right words come and you change it. (That is my "needs work" folder). On rare and wondrous occasions you get an idea, write something within minutes and just know "that's it". Complete and intact, just as it is.
Whether it comes right away or takes years to finish, to have written a poem is a magical thing. It is a precious thing capturing a glimmering fragment of time, frozen forever. You have put into words what most people only see with their eyes. If what you have written touches someone, (yourself or others), touches their soul, then it is all worthwhile. Then you feel proud to call yourself "a poet".
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