The Job

2024.12.06

Good morning that wonderful way.

You never let me down page, never get me down.

How are you?

Still too early to say?

Having that kind of day?

Hope your that brings you joy.

If not find a new that and keep going.

"If you're a poet when you're 20, it's because you're 20," an old guy said to me a long time ago.

Then went on, "If you're a poet when you're 40, it's because you're a poet."

Been most definitely a poet for a couple years now.

A strange thing to be in our world. Undefinable, mysterious, what's the use?

Hallmark cards and Valentine's Day?

More.

Language. Words and putting words to dreams. Making available new ways to express ourselves by expanding the meaning, reinforcing the meaning, of old words and making new words when the old won't do.

The only way to have a life is to be able to have a story called your life, and the only way to have a story is to use words.

The richer our language the fuller our experience of Life can be.

Words and their use is as necessary a function as breathing for us to experience Life.

Poets are the protectors of language. We keep the campfire of definition burning so our experience of life has a safe place to grow.

If all our metaphors stay the same, if our language refuses to grow, if our words won't stretch to see around new corners, Life can't grow by growing too much of the same.

The whole world would be a swamp without poets to nurture the landscape.

Too much of the same things would grow and grow and grow like a pile of blankets dropped atop each other leaving nothing but a mound of things once designed for comfort and warmth an indistinguishable suffocating mess.

Our shared understanding of our words has to grow or they fester growing too many of the same moments.

Time attempts to stay still, which by definition Time can't do. We smother and dull our senses in sameness.

When a word doesn't mean what it could it doesn't mean what it should.

This is why we must relearn to listen to each other.

Your expression of each word is different than mine.

There's a richness to every conversation lost in all the flash of fast and fast and faster insistence these days. And so our nights are spent wondering if the day's running around was worth much at all.

Our relationships with all things can only be as fulfilling as our understanding of the words we bring to the relationship.

Your dog is just a dog until he's Abe.

Abe is a word used in countless ways that expands its definition, the literal story of 'Abe' grew when I named my dog.

A poet makes new each experience by giving it a new name. He’s no longer just a dog, he’s Abe.

Your name is the same. You can have your story because you have your name.

If the job of a poet is to name the dogs of experience, I'm happy to be one.

Take care, name an experience in your life with a new arrangement of words, and have your better day.