Poetry

Poetry. I read it...I used to write it...The words leap off the page and soak into my soul. Poets can take the most ordinary words, string them together, and they become something magical. I have favorites, of course. Emily Dickenson, Lord Byron, Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, Keats, Shelly, Shakespeare, and, my absolute favorite, Walt Whitman.

This is the female form,
A divine nimbus exhales, from it from head to foot,
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless
vapor, all falls aside but myself and it,
Books, art, religion, time, the visible, and solid earth, and what
was expected of heaven or fear'd of hell, are
now consumed,
Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it, the response
likewise ungovernable
Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all dif-
fused, mine too diffused,
Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh
swelling and deliciously aching,
Limitless jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly
of love, white-blow and delirious juice,
Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the
prostrate dawn,
Undulating into the willing and yielding day,
Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh'd day.

How beautiful is that?Part 5 of I Sing The Body Electric. It leaves an undeniable image in your mind. And, if you don't get the meaning behind the words, you can still capture some of the magic.