The Power of Poetry

Write a poem!

Yep, even if you are currently working on a 500-page tome on the Rise and (hopeful) Fall of  the oil industry, or your next novel, taking a break from prose to think like a poet allows you to zoom out and contemplate the universe as a whole, or focus in on a single eyelash. Use your brain in a new way. Who knows what connections  or insights you might shake loose?

Last week I discovered a poem I’d scribbled in the inside, back cover of a book, in my single days – sometime in the 80s or 90s.

It’s an accurate glimpse of what was on my mind at the time, when friends tried to talk me out of letting my hair go grey. Women go grey early in my family, and I’d always loved the shimmering strands, but only old women or those who had “given up” let their hair go grey back then.  I laugh now that it took me so long to live according to my own values, and not the Southern California subculture in which I lived.

Writing this poem did not inform my writing immediately, but in my first novel, SHATTERED, the main character, Logan, struggles between her core values and those of the culture in which she lives and works. Playing with different genres keeps your writing fresh.

GREY

“Hey! What did you say?

No Way!”

“Why not?”

“You want to get laid?

Then no dull, washer-woman,

wrinkle-matching mop

for you!”

“You mean that glorious,

shiny, silver treasure

that sparkles and tries

to push its way up and out every 6 weeks?”

“Roots. They call those roots –

cover them up.”

“Hmmm…Roots….

Deep strong woman roots

that reach through my body,

represent my soul,

all wisdom,

love, fights, glowing, learning,

rocking, crying, laughing,

dancing…all of me?

I will NOT drown my Roots in a bottle of $3.00 dye!

No way.

I LIKE my grey!