Poetry isn’t writing

Poetry isn’t writing, poetry is experiencing.

You can’t sit down and force yourself to write poetry

like you can force yourself to write a verse in rhyme.

 

Poetry is the residu of you

experiencing the word, its art consists of being ready

to catch the words when and if they come.

You can live a poet’s life for many

years without writing a single line, and

 

maybe one day you see the sunlight

like it is stuck in the trees and it needs these words.

Words that express a specific kind of silence;

poetry is modulating silence, the silence

between lovers, the silence of war, of a busy street –