What’s The Point of Poetry?

Day 1385.

I just wanted to enjoy a film with one of my favorite actors and instead I was launched into a frenzy of googling poetry.

The film was full of exquisite poetry.

I was initially triggered by the line I wanted to save you, but all I can do is honour you.

Yes, darling Luke, I couldn’t save you but I can honour you. Honouring you in helping others and hopefully saving others from your fate and mine. I couldn’t find the poet and suspect it’s the playwright’s own words.

But also a line from Rossetti’s Sudden Light.. ..

I have been here before, But when or how I cannot tell: I know the grass beyond the door, The sweet keen smell, The sighing sound, the lights around the shore. You have been mine before,— How long ago I may not know: But just when at that swallow's soar Your neck turn'd so, Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore. Has this been thus before? And shall not thus time's eddying flight Still with our lives our love restore In death's despite, And day and night yield one delight once more?

.. and once more the tears fall as I write.

Yes, myriad triggers of the familiar that is true and complete love.

I know so little about poetry but I marvel at how it can so beautifully capture emotion and concept in a way mere writing can not, lifting and breaking my heart in equal measure, wishing I had more time to love my boy in life, feeling blessed to have had any time with him at all in beautiful familiarity and pure joy of his presence, and of course, yearning for a reunion that I haven’t always believed in, in death .

I have been here before I suppose is the point of journalling my grief journey, so that others who sadly find themselves in what my friend Jesse calls this tangled knot of grief, know they are not alone.

And now poetry shows me that I am not alone either.