“Good poetry begins with
the lightest touch,
a breeze arriving from nowhere,
a whispered healing arrival,
a word in your ear,
a settling into things,
then like a hand in the dark
it arrests the whole body,
steeling you for revelation.

In the silence that follows
a great line
you can feel Lazarus
deep inside
even the laziest, most deathly afraid
part of you,
lift up his hands and walk toward the light.”
~David Whyte

This morning I opened a new book of poetry by poet and author David Whyte. We will be blessed with his presence here in the Twin Cities in October and I wanted to further familiarize myself with his work. As I began to read his sparse, well-chosen words I was reminded once again about how little we really need to communicate well, to make all the points that seem so life-threatening to us. Poetry almost always does this for me. In the flood of words and messages catapulted our way every day, it is a good reminder.

I was thinking about just this as I was driving to the office this morning. Since it was the day after the political primary, the airwaves were rife with voices dissecting what the outcomes and the votes meant. I listened as people jockeyed over one another to make their point. In this listening, I noticed how little they were actually listening to one another. It was clear from the answers and their interactions. It is so often that we are not really a listener in a conversation, providing a back and forth exchange of ideas, thoughts or feelings. Most times we are only biding our time to jump in or on the words of the other so we can spew forth the words we believe to be the correct ones.

That is why poetry is such a gift. And thinking about this I began to wonder what the next few months of political rhetoric might look like and sound like if all the speakers delivered their messages in this form. What if poetry was the medium of the political speech? What if each candidate had to choose words wisely, sparingly, in order to offer their bid for office? How different our experience might be!

The idea made me laugh and also stirred my imagination. I could be wrong but I think our experience might be gentler, more nuanced. Though some may say the poetry of rap is confrontational, and some is, for the most part when we have to choose our words wisely, when we have to boil down our message to its essence as in poetry, the letters come together in a more beautiful and exquisite way, a less in-your-face way.

This does not mean it is less powerful or any less important. It does mean it comes from some place, some deep place, that has the ability to lift the hearer toward revelation, steeling them against fear and sending them toward the light. It seems to me this would be one goal of a political process that lives up to its true definition…..’for the good of all the people.’

Of course this little daydream of mine will not happen. But that does not stop me from hoping.