The Invitation of Poetry

Love locked Out - Merrit



Poetry is for this writer and storyteller one of the seven ways to living a wonderful life.  Poetry is the language that invites you to live the wondertale that you are here to tell - not so much in words but as the presence of beauty that is beyond form.  It is the one language that will allow you to travel to infinite worlds of potential.


Do you feel yourself to be beautiful?  Do you walk in beauty as the Navaho blessing invites you to do?  This writer is not simply writing here about being glamorous - but being in direct connection with the essence of who you are.  Moving as the grace note you are here to play as part, but never apart from, the pressence of the universal intelligence that your are.  This universal intelligence is Love.


Most people, most everyone I know does not consider themselves to be beautiful.  They will defend this idea saying that it is a kind of arrogance.  Yet look at little children playing for no reason at all and experiencing delight in their natural creative expression.
That is until such time that they are taught such creativity needs to be productively channelled into making something functional.


I tell stories about the Tuatha de Danaan - the beautiful people - who in the myths of Ireland are driven underground.  This story, like all mythology, is not just some old story.  It is an ever present story of the way we treat ourselves with our conditionality and our inner critic who loves to tell us how inadequate we are.  We are the sleeping beauty asleep in the high tower of the intellect that thinks that intellectual knowledge means you understand who you are.


Poetry is the language of the heart that knows beauty.  That is why in all the circles I have attended at the Benwiskin Centre I leave a book of poetry on the table in front of the fire.  These books invite you into the fire that burns no wood.

I might as well try and Catch the Wind

Waterhouse - Windflowers

I sit by the fire and pick up the white guitar and start to pick out a melody. The chord is an F Minor 7th cord that gives the intro of the song a kind of haunting refrain. I begin to sing this song about the impossibility of Love as reflected in the lines: -
“I might as well try and catch the wind.”


In this song the singer songwriter expresses the hearts longing – it is my longing – it is the longing expressed in the words


“Standing in your heart is where I want to be and long to be.”


This longing is the longing of the mystic heart to be the knowing and presence of Love. All mystics and all seekers are longing to be at one with the heart of creation that the heart knows is the only placeless place of real contentment and joy. It takes courage to long for what is formless, invisible, and immortal. That is why courage as a word means, “to enter the heart.”

Longing is a very Irish sentiment. It appears in our music and in the landscape, particularly the landscape of the West of Ireland. People come to Ireland for many reasons but those who connect deeply with the landscape connect to what the great Irish poet W. B. Yeats called “the deep hearts core.”

In Irish mythology there are stories of the timeless land of Tir Na Nog. This is an understanding of your timeless nature – your forever young nature. In Christian terms this is the experience of eternal life which paradoxically speaking you know when you are not. This is the riddle of existence and is as difficult to attain as trying to catch the wind yet it is what the heart longs for.

Sitting by the fire I continue singing and play a chord that is a drone chord. Its sound invites the hearts longing into its direct awareness of our timeless nature. The song, Catch the Wind by Donovan could be considered an unrequited love song but for this singer, sitting by the fire, the invitation goes so much deeper. Although it is a kind of sad lament there is a beauty in expressing this longing for the paradox of existence that once known it is never forgotten.

This is the opening song of a long night of heartsongs that takes me, and takes the listeners deeper, into the fire that burns no wood. Then as the night progresses we might, as told in a line from another song by the same singer songwriter find ourselves experiencing: -


And at the midnight hour they jumped into the fire.
And in that fire they will stay forever and a day.
For the fire O Lord is the fire of Love
Just like the peaceful dove.


So we do what we have done for thousands of years. We gather around the fire to listen to stories and songs that give us a sense of meaning and empower us for the difficult work of living life in form. This allows us to feel a real sense of community gathered together around the hearth and the heart and to connect to our Ruách rhythm – the rhythm of our spirit and of our inspiration.