In my practice as a therapist, I encourage clients to explore and use a myriad of therapeutic tools to help them along the way. Poetry is one such tool. Whether you write poetry or simply read it, there is no doubt of its inherent benefits for the heart and soul.
Poetry at its best is a piece of work from the inside out in which aspects of the writer's private world is made public. It is profound in its meaning and while the reader you might say, is a beneficiary, so too, is the writer. You see, poetry affords us the opportunity to connect with our deepest self. It is from this emotional space that we connect with our soul and this, in my opinion, is where and how we begin to heal.
The healing and transformative effects of poetry is most evident when the words, the message and its meaning speaks to us in a way that resonates as the voice of the soul.
Poetry can bring out what we're feeling, seeing, and experiencing, but it can also change the way we think, feel, and move in the world. We can use it as a way to connect rather than disconnect with our sense of self. This in and of itself is powerful given that the basis for much of our pain and suffering is based on the latter. Good poetry inspires us to reflect, question ourselves and our beliefs, brings about new understanding and helps us feel less alone in the world just by knowing many of our experiences are shared by others. For many, poetry provides a safe way to feel and experience their emotions and this can be truly cathartic.
I have gathered a collection of poems to share with you. Perhaps you will see aspects of yourself and your life. Perhaps you will draw meaning and significance from some of them. And perhaps the words, images and ideas will elicit an emotional response that speaks to your soul.
Poems for the heart and soul
The Strength Within
Build the world you dream of
In your heart and in your mind
Leave things a little better
From the challenges you find
Stretch yourself in directions
You wouldn't always go
And you will find new purpose
And ways that you can grow
These are the seeds I've planted
And sometimes seen come true
Not only in my own life
But in my children too
Just as one dream is ending
Another one can begin
Fueled by love and memories
And strength you have within
- Robert Longley
"Head, Heart"
Heart weeps.
Head tries to help heart.
Head tells heart how it is, again:
You will lose the ones you love. They will all go.
But even the earth will go, someday.
Heart feels better, then.
But the words of head do not remain long in the
ears of the heart.
Heart is so new to this.
I want them back, says heart.
Head is all heart has.
Help, head. Help heart.
- Lydia Davis
"What the Living Do"
Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for
days, some utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous,
and the crusty dishes have piled up
waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This
is the everyday we spoke of.
It's winter again: the sky's a deep, headstrong
blue, and the sunlight pours through
the open living-room windows because the
heat's on too high in here and I can't turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of
groceries in the street, the bag breaking,
I've been thinking: This is what the living do. And
yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk,
spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,
I thought it again, and again later, when buying a
hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold.
What you called that yearning.
What you finally gave up. We want the spring to
come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss-we
want more and more and then more of it.
But there are moments, walking, when I catch a
glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and
I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep
for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and
unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless:
I am living. I remember you.
- Marie Howe
The Journey
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and
began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to
do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voice behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and
deeper
into the world, determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life that you could
save.
- Mary Oliver
It Felt Love
How
Did the rose
Ever open its heart
And give to this world
All its
Beauty
It felt the encouragement of light
Against its
Being,
Otherwise,
We all remain
Too
Frightened.
- Hafiz
A Blessing for the Brokenhearted
Let us agree for now that
we will not say
the breaking makes us stronger
or that it is better to have this pain
than to have done without this love.
Let us promise we will not tell ourselves
time will heal the wound,
when every day our waking opens it anew.
Perhaps for now it can be enough to simply marvel at the
mystery of how a heart so broken can go on beating,
as if it were made for precisely this--
as if it knows the only cure for love is more of it,
as if it sees the heart's sole remedy for breaking is to love still,
as if it trusts that its own persistent pulse is the
rhythm of a blessing we cannot begin to fathom
but will save us nonetheless.
- Jan Richardson
Talking to Grief
Ah, Grief, I should not treat you
like a homeless dog
who comes to the back door
for a crust, for a meatless bone.
I should trust you.
I should coax you
into the house and give you
your own corner,
a worn mat to lie on,
your own water dish.
You think I don't know you've been living
under my porch.
You long for your real place to be readied
before winter comes. You need
your name,
your collar and tag. You need
the right to warn off intruders,
to consider
my house your own
and me your person
and yourself
my own dog.
- Denise Levertov
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
- Robert Frost
