I've been reading a newly released book which is both a memoir and a poetry collection, written by Megan Willome. The Joy of Poetry contains unexpected agony, love, anger, loss, discovery, confusion, darkness, and light. In other words, Joy. Because, isn't Joy, when we find it, comprised of all these and more? 

The Joy of Poetry is not a book in which I dare skim over the pages in search of the good parts. Every part is a good part. There are so many poignant glimpses into the author's heart (and my own), it's not worth the risk of skimming. So, I savor, slowly. Even though it is only 168 pages long, and even though I have been reading it for four days, as of this writing I am only half way through..

​Lately I've been refusing to write much of anything at all, and definitely refusing to go very deep. I've been painting, instead, because sometimes colors flow more freely than words. But today Willome's words invited me, without saying so, to write about not writing. A string of words fell out onto my pages. These words:

My father would say
“Everything has to be somewhere,”
if anything became lost

(and something always became lost
in a house with four kids,
two parents,
a cat
an iguana,
countless jars of even more dead spiders,
and,
a dog).

Every cell inside me,
still,
at the age of 56,
demands that he is wrong
about everything-

except one boistrous cell whispering
Even water,
as it fades from the puddle,
is merely shifting
form.
​
And I feel sorry for having been so stubborn.