Here we are on May 4th and I missed completely the fact that April was National Poetry Month. It is not that I didn't hear it announced or that I didn't read it several times in several different places. I was just swimming too fast in the sea of my own words and those of so many others, that I missed the opportunity to bathe in the sparse waters of poetry.

A couple of years ago I came to the realization that poetry was, for me, the real place of wisdom. The truly important things that need to be said need few words, I believe. And so I began to read more poetry and even write some. But over the last few months I have fallen of the wagon, so to speak, and have fueled my general addiction to words with compound sentences that furrow the brow and numb the mind.

And so I am sorry, deeply sorry, to have missed the opportunity to set aside the thirty days of April to read the few carefully chosen words of the poets.Romantically, I imagine these artists of the word, hunched over desks spinning out their heart stories and then stepping back from what they have written. Taking pen to paper, they then must remove this flowery phrase and that simple word until……until…..the art of the sparse emerges. What a challenge and what a gift.

I realize, of course, that I have just rambled on about what I am railing against. So instead I will leave you with the poet's words and save my thoughts for National Too Many Words Month. When does that fall on the calendar?

"Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.

~David Whyte