Self-Portrait, Early Morning (poem)

 

Sunset Point
Key Colony Beach, FL

Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit dear Jan at bookseedstudio for Roundup. 

Like many in our community, I'm excited for Monday's ALA Youth Media Awards, which of course is always such an inspiring opportunity to celebrate books we've loved and also to add new titles to the never-ending TBR stack! Love love love.

This week's ArtSpeak: Light poem turned into a self-portrait. It's inspired by The Artist's Sister at a Window by Berthe Morisot. 

Most poems, probably, are self-portraits, at least a little bit, because of what the words/thoughts/images reveal about the poet who wrote it. I guess self-portraits are more direct, more intentional about what they are revealing? 

For the past several years I have studied a lot about awareness and the seat of consciousness—lots of meditation and mind-training and surrender. (Michael Singer, anyone?) This poem speaks to some of that. Thanks so much for reading. 

Self-Portrait, Early Morning

no surging
thoughts

no billowing
feelings—

I simply
sit

in the world
of the moment

unfolding
before me—

this window,
this world

that requires
nothing

of me—
not fingers,

mouth,
nor mind—

I am
morning,

I am
light

- Irene Latham