lines of thought on a sunday evening

an advantage to being a poet is a deep attention to emotion.

i think maybe every poem i've ever written has been a psalm of sort--questioning, struggling, praising, asking why.

i asked God for something and was told no. or maybe wait, but its hard to see that with the No so fresh.

it seems most people want to treat sadness like it is a broken happiness. they want to fix it, skim over it, with talking, listening.

i think there is value in feeling sadness, melancholy, the malaise (a french-kind of sadness that i prefer to feel when i am sad). 

i best meet malaise with solitude & silence--breathing, a pen and blank paper, sunlight in the trees, God's presence manifest even here, in my home, even as i write some scrawling words i'll erase tomorrow.

and there is value in silence too.

even feeling this, i know this will be a week of joy--surrounded by family and friends, watching my sweet daughter turn one year old.