the year of the poem, a pondering

The looping that I have noticed is in particular taking me back to the year two thousand and sixteen, ‘the year of poem‘ (strangely I did not feel like writing digits, I am aware it looks a little odd). With some fanfare I christened this year with a title of such vast aplomb it appears that I sank under the weight of it.

The ‘year of the poem’ plummeted from its giddying heights to a swift confrontation with reality, as I quickly realised. The ‘poetry diary‘ stayed buried in a box, poems remained unwritten, even the ‘editing poetry course‘ became an ordinary memory with startling rapidity.

No more ‘year of the poem’ musings were mused.

But now looking back, the year of the poem was speedily despatched, not because the poem element was too small, but because it was too big.

Somehow, a pre-existing poetic dimension took hold of my whole entire life.

And, of course, being frail, not really realising, consumed by other things, practicalities, transitions, this elemental condition was not fully grasped.

Dizzying though it may sound, preposterous though it feels to write, what happened to me in the year two thousand and sixteen is that my weary, care-worn ways of being were shed, like an age of reason skin, and I leaned into trust, to relinquishing control and holding on to faith as a human experiment. And slowly but surely, the very substance of my being mutated into wonder.

What does it mean?

I’m still not entirely sure.