There's Nothing Sad About Today

A few minutes later I actually enter The Gold Mine Saloon for Poetry Thursday and I am instantly gifted with the beautiful words of Kalamu ya Salaam. In this audio post, you can't really hear a very good recording of the New Orleans poem he was reading as I entered, but perhaps you can grasp a sense of the feeling that was there.

I am always captured by the power of words when spoken by people who are passionate about the form. Poetry, which can be incomprehensible to some and enlightenment incarnate to others, is a form that, by it's nature, calls us out. I remember as clearly as if it were yesterday the first time I heard a poet speak the words he had written. I don't remember the poet (unfortunately) and I don't remember the poem, but I remember where I was standing and what I felt 32 years ago in Tucson.

Tonight was not disimilar. In fact, it was very much the same. I was given the gift of words and spirit and soul and I am thankful for the opportunity to partake of such a wonderful Eucharist of Words.

P.S. The title for this post comes from a line in one of Kalamu's poems.