Wood Water Heart
For the past few years, I’ve been handcrafting small booklets of my poetry together at the rate of one per year, which I then have printed up at a local print shop. My homegrown collection for 2024 is fresh off the press as of earlier this week, and is entitled: Wood Water Heart.
This collection aims to be good company for those of us walking on the path of mindfulness and heartfulness. Wood Water Heart is a journey of self-discovery; a portal through which we can rediscover our way back home to the here & now; a gentle reminder that time is precious, life is short, and the joy of living requires deliberate cultivation.
I place importance on the presence of poetry in the world. I’m an amateur at it, to be sure. But the act of penning poems, whether or not they are any “good”, enlivens me more than most anything else I do or know. The process is more important than the final product of the poem.
Oftentimes, I don’t feel as though I can even take credit for the poems I write, as they seem to write themselves. I just happen to be the closest poet at hand when the poem is wandering by. And sometimes even I don’t know what they mean?! I just go with the flow and write what needs to be written. And then hope that it offers a little bit of something good to someone else’s day when I share it.
Rarely does a day go by when I don’t read at least one poem from another poet. Amid the books I am actively reading, I always have a book of poetry in the mix. My current read on the poetry front is Sister Dang Nghiem’s new book The River In Me. And the one before that was Jane Hirshfield’s book of poems Ledger. And the one before that was The Purity of Desire: 100 Poems of Rumi by Daniel Ladinsky, with Nancy Owen Barton. But my favorite poetry book thus far this year has been The Sun and Her Flowers by Rupi Kaur.
Did I mention poetry is life? Yes, of course, there are many necessary practicalities of living. We all need to do A, B, C and X, Y, Z. But in between, there is an entire alphabet of other letters. Poetry is akin to all of those other letters. It’s what adds vibrancy and color to the lens through which we see the world. Poetry is whatever brings us to life; whatever animates us to move in the direction of what speaks and calls to us. Poetry is an expression of the heart, and it comes in many forms. Poetry can be an actual poem, or it can be the feeling of intimately connecting with someone, or the enjoyment of doing something we love to do. Poetry can be the woods or the ocean or a walk around our neighborhood on the most splendid of autumn days. Without the poetry of living, our days grow stale and boring and exhausting.
But I digress.
Okay. Back to the subject matter at hand, which is to announce my latest collection of amateur poetry. If you fancy a booklet, please let me know. They are on sale for $10. You can email me at EmptyMountain406@gmail.com. I’d be glad to send you a copy.