In the Wild Light

by Jeff Zentner

Poets use language in ways I’ve never considered, to describe things I thought defied description.

“Every hurt, every sorrow, every scar has brought you here. Poetry lets us turn pain into fire by which to warm ourselves. Go build a fire.”

It’s the same abiding peace I experience after being on the river.

I get out my poetry notebook and pen to seek my new shelter, the only one I know anymore.

Poets look for how the world is sewn together so they can unstitch it and piece it back together in a new way.

We think of language as this tame thing that lives in neat garden beds, bound by rules and fences. Then someone shows it to you growing wild and beautiful, flowering vines consuming cities, erasing pavement and lines. Breaking through any fence that would try to contain it. Reclaiming. Reshaping. Reforming.

There is beauty in every wound. Find it.

As cures for pain go, poetry is better than most.

He says it’s okay to love someone who doesn’t love you back—that’s a love story too

As the hours creep by, I sit at his side, listening to him breathe, trying to build a store of his presence—like an animal hiding away food for a long season of hunger.

Dignity dies as the body does.

This memory is a ghost.

I wanted to love the world without taking anything from it.

“Someday, someone I try to save is going to let me.”

turn to poetry. It doesn’t demand that you fix anything or come to any conclusions. It only asks you to observe and sit with what you feel. And with grief, there are no fixes. No conclusions. We can only sit with it.”

I remember thinking how strong you were.” “I was faking to impress you.” “What’s the difference between faking being strong and being strong?”

There are secret fires you wall off because you fear what they’ll burn if you loose them.

Why is feeling so terrifying that we try to stop it? Feeling is a thing that’s ours only, a thing we don’t borrow.

saudade

You are not a creature of grief. You are not a congregation of wounds. You are not the sum of your losses. Your skin is not your scars. Your life is yours, and it can be new and wondrous. Remember that.”