February; between winter and spring/poem #9 (or: why this is Poetry for the Living)

Someone asked
why this poetry for the living?
why not: living poetry, or: poetry alive?

I said

there were years when poems
crash landed in my hands,
each beaten raw by the journey
secret slinking words that kept
me breathing but on a far shore,
dazzled by defeats.

Those were times when
I was homesick for other worlds,
at war with gravity as if it
was the enemy, angry with God
as though God had misplaced me,
when here I was, straggling.

There were days and nights
when all I had was remembrance
of hope, its light too bright,
my soul leery, hiding itself
inside incantations of loss.
The need to survive knows no bounds,
and fear has little wisdom.

But how long can one allow
a keening that buries the heart?
The shroud slips and frays,
it snags thorny flowers from the path,
attracts energy that circles the seeker.
It can act seem a skin that protects
less than it wounds, so fails.

So I shed heavy armor.
Opened, exposed.

And again inlets were cleared
for vagaries of poems and prayers,
earth and star stories
that folded into one:
compassion first and last.
Then the life, any life, will heal,
and words will arrive in flocks
like exotic and common birds,

to build great nests
so life can improvise,
grow whole and bold,
a paean, a rhapsody
that flows like blood inside poems:

this is not poetry for the dying,
nor news for the sleepwalker
this is
poetry for the 
achinglaughingprayingworkinghoping
living