This week you’re getting a taste of a style of episode I’m calling, Artist Interludes. This is when we feature a poet, writer, or musician who discusses how their art has helped them better understand or connect with a facet of their life or themselves. Then, we’ll get to hear that poem, piece, or song - something I hope will not only help you see a snippet of the world through a poetic lens, but also bring more art into your life without having to leave your living room.
Today, you’ll be listening to a poem I wrote last week called “In Margins as Wide as Seas.” In this episode, I share the backstory to the poem and how it’s helping me lean into a new chapter and iteration of self.
I hope you enjoy the poem and stay tuned for next week’s episode where I’ll be talking about “Doing It Scared.”
As always, if you like what you hear, share it with a friend and thanks for being here.
In Margins as Wide as Seas
If there were no instructions
No words left on a tattered envelope
sent from generation to generation
to your front door
loaded with the best of intentions
but things that were never yours.
If there was only a single word
on a single page
with margins as wide as seas
What would you fill all that space with?
What wild ideas could you raise the sail,
catch the wind of a new reality?
What bottled waterfalls
would break open into rivers?
Carve a path not even gamma waves could’ve dreamt up
If the shoulds didn’t matter
Because they never truly did
How much further would that 2 am idea high tide to
When you realize there’s no need to contain what always changes,
never meant to sit stagnant
couldn’t possibly be grasped
slips through fingertips, impossible to mold
Because the only contract we signed at first light
was that the uncomfortable reality that
We are winding roads in two-legged form.
We are Spread your arms across continents
but stay within the aisle of cautionary tales.
We are caterpillars with partial caccoons
constantly assuming we’ve reached butterfly.
But maybe alchemy is simpler than we realize.
Because there’s something inside that’s here before
a lightness in a step when its led by the soul
And stays up late, whispering at night
Whispers when the mind drifts to vastness, less fear in sight
Accept the star to sun iteration, it often says
the endless ripening
Maybe this time just surrender to softness,
it questions, it begs.
Just for this next one,
let it flow.
Drop all that resistance, honey
because this is where your story is meant to go.
