I have always written poetry. I have seldom ‘spoken’ my poetry. I have definitely never created a poem while speaking. Before this weekend 🙂
It came up during an interaction in a big group, while speaking out to someone one on one, standing before each other face to face with a steadily held mutual gaze. The ask was to say sentences beginning with “I am” and followed by a metaphor. For about 2 minutes. To get started one could use metaphors which had been suggested for you by others, just before. If it sounds bizarre, please be assured that it is.
Here below is what came up for me as I spoke, some of it quite unexpected. I was surprised by how it started to flow, given I have categorically had issues with sentences beginning “I am” and followed by something specific. One of my previous blog posts even dwells on this very discomfort. The first couple of metaphors (or archetypes) here are borrowed from others’ suggestions, some of which I may now have forgotten, and the rest arrived of its own will.
I am a bird
I am a goddess
I am fire woman
I am a child
I am a mother
I am a lover
I am a poet
I am an artist
I am a one-of-its-kind tree
On the top
Of a distant hill
That someone watches from a village below
I am that someone
I am the explorer who climbs up the hill
I am the ancient one who offers water on the way
I am the one who tires and pauses
I am the voice who says “go on”
I am the one who reaches the top
and asks what next?
I am the one who leaves
On arriving
And the one who stays behind
I am the one sitting under the tree
Tasting the fruit
I am..
At this point the timer went off. Aptly in the middle of the sentence, because I wasn’t sure what would come next and because I like that open space. The possibility that there will be something else there at some point.. open to leaving it open for now.
In the room, all seemed to agree that it had been very difficult to talk about oneself in such a way. That would usually have been me too. But in this case, I was the one who was speaking, and also the one who was wondering where the hell this was coming from 😀 and most of all I was the one who felt buoyed.
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