manzanita sing
sweet bells chime for all to hear
beauty on your branch

I first began writing poetry as a teenager. I didn't realize then that I was searching for a way to find my voice to express the longing and yearning that I was experiencing as I began to make the transition from child to adult. And as an adult, I discovered that Imagery is my first language. No wonder that transition was so difficult for me! Poetry became the bridge between what I was experiencing and trying to articulate to the people in my world. Poetry allowed me then, and continues to allow me now, a way to communicate and interact with feelings and experiences that our modern culture doesn’t always have a language for. Poetry has given me a way to speak about the taboos we experience, especially as women. One of those taboos is the feelings and emotions around death and unspeakable loss.

I lost my husband to cancer in the Fall of 2010. At the same time, I lost the voice I had struggled so hard to find and my ability to write poetry. Everything dried up in me. There were no more first lines… no more sparks and urges to put my pen to paper or fingers to the keyboard… There was no way to speak to the unspeakable grief that I was experiencing. After Milt had been gone for a short time, I got an email from Rebecca Brooks of Recuerda Mi Corazon. She asked if I would like to join their online Friday, -Haiku My Heart- group.

Haiku? I knew of it… however, I had never tried to write it. I thought it had a lot of rules and do’s and don’ts. And those who know me, know that I don’t do well with a lot of rules and too much rigid structure. I found out that all I had to do was take a photo and write seventeen syllables about what I saw. I thought… I can do that. So, I dove in, which is something I do very well when I feel the call.

small words say a lot

images say even more

together a song

The formula is:

-5-

-7-

-5-

With these small words... and with this breathable structure... I began to be able to touch inside of me what was untouchable. I didn’t have to explain myself. I didn’t have to write more than those seventeen syllables. And… I began to hear first lines again… I would wake in the middle of the night and hear a first line. If I didn’t write them down, right then… they were gone in the morning, like the fragments of a dream… I began to count the syllables out on the fingers of my left hand… and thirteen years later… that drumming of my fingers still soothes my heart, slows my breathing, and awakens something creative in me.

By looking for photos to take in the world around me each week, I began to see the world in a new way. I looked for beauty where none seemed to be and found it… again, and again. Life after death. The world inside me, and around me, came alive again. Expression came when there was none. Small words expanded into more words... and I found that the bridge had opened once again to the other side.

 
Listen for that first line, and then follow the thread....

A single thread is all we need…

One golden thread

taking us to the center

of our being

where we wind around

to the flower-lotus,

the sacred honey

spilling from the well

where time begins and ends

as we simultaneously wind

our way back out

to greet the mornings of our evenings.

You can find more of Lea’s poetry here on the Manzanita Website by doing a N.E.W.S. search under the Category of Poetry and on our Creative Labyrinth website, where her haiku posts from 2010 to 2023 also live.