This Reminds Me

So I’ve been reading Ireland lately, a novel that weaves Irish legends into a modern day setting.  Really interesting.  And last night’s chapter offered a striking visual, one that I’ve mulled through the day The author recounted how poetry was first created in Ireland.  A witch instructed a tongue-tied, love-struck man to look skyward and pull words from the air, because every single word that everyone has ever said is floating there – swirling, colliding, drifting – awaiting a master’s hand to craft an emotion.

Lois, 12, wrote and illustrated this poem tonight as a homework assignment.  The drawing is wispy – muted – ghostly.  The scan may be hard to read; I’ll enter the text below.

The Ghost Dance

At midnight,
Inside the haunted house,
Toward the kitchen,
Around the corner,
Beyond the dining room,
Up the old steps,
Behind the doors,
Near the bed,
To the right,
In the closet,
Past the clothes,
Through the hidden door,
Into the ballroom,
The ghosts are dancing.

I really had to search for these shadowy characters – an exhausting search - but her words led me to them, like a poetic trail blazed in a writer’s light.  I finally found them behind that hidden door.  And they’re dancing, swirling around the cloistered ballroom floor like the words that describe them had been celestially swirling moments before.

The tongue-tied Irishman won the love of his life with his poetry.

Maybe the rest of us simply live with the love of poetry, offering an occassional heavenward glance in search of the elusive words that might describe it.