Poetry

There are
secrets poets keep
deep within their hearts
like the first time
it was broken
then the last time it was taken
and we keep the secrets of quiet days
when God speaks such gentleness in us
that we cry, cry from the depth of meaning

meaning so many miss
and we share them
in words
eloquent
sometimes simple sentiments
sometimes with a hyphen
to join one thought to the next
secrets that are hard for us to share
they aren’t the secrets of who we forgot
who we never loved, who we loved 
and sometimes who we never knew
they are the secrets of the universe
tucked somewhere between our pen
and our desire to be heard
it is as if,
as if
God is asking us
“What are you going to do,
sit there and say nothing?
Sit there in your writer’s solitude
while the world falls apart?
Do something…”
So we do
and for most of us,
if not all of us
it is the most painful
of experiences,
we go from those quiet days
into louder ones
filled with know-it-all critics
and agents
and then rejections of poems- some times acceptance
like a crown was granted on top of a poet, 
waiting to be seen, waiting to be heard,
but we kill something we had in that quiet
but we want to break it
break it and for that
we are willing to have the world
gaze upon our words as if they knew us intimately
and they want to
and they need to
how else will they explain their very
existence
By Melinda Cochrane copyright
also published at lifeasahumanmagazine

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