Living Inside a Poem

Imagine living inside a poem.

Meaning, to view the world through a lens where you see not just the sun and the trees, but lose yourself in how the sun dapples across the leaves.

A lens where you stare into your coffee and see not caffeine or routine, but the subtle red hue that bleeds into the blackness.

A lens where you laugh and cry and grin and exclaim as the world nudges you, letting yourself oblige and indulge.

For most of my life I’ve been inclined this way, but never surrendered fully to the flow. 

I never submitted to the world’s poetry, nor bowed to my relentless noticing of it all.

I restrained myself because all the feeling seemed too intense. Who was I to see life as a poem when there’s so much suffering in the world? And how are you even supposed to properly explain that life through your eyes is like being inside a poem?

All that restraint brought me was pain.

So I’m not holding back anymore.

I’m letting all the feeling in, intensity be damned. Welcomed with a kiss and a song.

And I’m spreading the word now too.

I’m letting the poetry bloom, and inviting others in. Like you.

So I smile when I see dying leaves that look prettier than the ones still vibrant and alive.

I cry when I watch or read stories, fiction and non, where the protagonist finally achieves their long-held dream.

I laugh when Larry David opens a coffee shop, a “spite store,” for the express purpose of fucking with Mocha Joe.

Our lives are coloured by so many of these moments.  

Fractals of experience that braid together into a grand tapestry on the Loom of You.

The shimmers and shadows alike can hold so much joy and beauty, so much wonder and gratitude, so much pleasure and laughter, glee and love.

If you let them in. This is the hard part, at least it was for me.

But I eventually realized that the same walls protecting me from the world were the same ones keeping me restrained, keeping my magic in. 

Walls work two ways, after all.

Letting them down has been the best decision I’ve ever made. 

No longer am I a man exiled from his kingdom.

And full-fledged immersion into a life of poetry has been the reward, like seeing the sunlight dapple across the trees during golden hour.

With love from the forest,

~ Alexander