After I began studying with poets at the University of Washington in the early 80’s, I had a closet in my bedroom under my house’s eaves converted into a writing nook with a skylight. Sitting there at night, I could see the stars and sometimes the moon. During the day, sunshine and Seattle’s famous clouds, its mist and rain inspired me. For my classes, I wrote and read poetry in my nook. In those years, I also took care of my two children and worked as a parent educator for a vocational school south of Seattle. I practiced person-centered education, understanding how to more fully engage students in the learning process. I was also learning how I felt about writing poetry, about announcing to myself and to others that I wrote poetry, about what it meant to me to believe and trust poetry as a guiding light for my life. For one of my early classes, I wrote this poem:

Under the Skylight

Not long ago, it was a closet,
one narrow door in, no light,
the stale unmoving air.

*

To decide to give up your dream
is to walk in
among the stationary.

*

We only think we’re different
than a shirt. The dreams choose us.
If we fit right and breathe,
they carry us for the ride.

I realized that fulfilling my dream of writing poetry was in fact a true purpose for me. That having a dream of doing something is a communication from one’s self about one’s abilities and mission in life. That doesn’t mean it isn’t work to fulfill the dream; but it does mean that we feel guided in the work and pleased to be doing it, despite the frustrations and obstacles that are often entailed.

Several years later, I was reading the submissions-wanted listings in Poets & Writers and one of them was for essays on one’s dream job. I wrote about mine: In my dream job, I would hang a shingle outside of my home that announced I was a resident poet. People could come in and see me, and after listening to them and their concerns, their sadness, their hopes and dreams, I would reach for a book from my shelves and select a poem to read together. I’d make a copy for the client to take home to memorize, to whisper at night, to belt out under the sun or the clouds, to recite while driving. Though many a poem is planted in the soil of anger, hate, irritation, loneliness and grief, poems  burst through that soil and flower. A poem provides the intimate contact we need for healing and for growth, for knowing what is human in our lives. Words can come from another’s experience in a place and in a time that miraculously match our experience in our own place and time.

Since the gift of writing had chosen me, I had to go with it, though I didn’t know where it would take me. Little did I expect all that has happened in the years since I wrote up my dream job: the Internet, Facebook, sites online loaded with poems we can click onto, daily and monthly email to sign up for that includes poems and links to them, online classes, online coaching, quick and easy ways to converse and message one another.

And so today, I have a shingle, www.writingitreal.com, and I am honored to have clients and share writing with them, not only writing that has made itself known to me in books, but also my writing and their writing. I have so many companions along the way. On this New Year, 2013, I want to say thank you for all of your words, for all of your support.

“Everyone holds a precious jewel, all embrace a precious gem; if you do not turn your attention around and look within, you will wander from home with a hidden treasure, “

— Bokuzan, 13th C Zen Scholar.

Remembering what Bokuzan says is fundamental to our well being. As writers, when we are scared of our work, scared that we don’t have the ability to do the work we conceive of, we are actually glimpsing the jewel we hold, noticing that it is the dream that carries us, that we are experiencing awe of who and what we might be.

When we begin to believe we can reveal the jewel, first to ourselves and then to others, even perhaps be guided by it, we might hear the voice of others we carry inside us, say something like, “What? Are you crazy? Writing poetry or personal essays or fiction isn’t necessary; do not let it distract you from real life.”

“Are we crazy?” No, we are not. Writing makes our lives real. We don’t have to give up our responsibilities to write, but if we don’t write what it is we have in us to write, we risk remaining strangers to ourselves. As William Stafford wrote in his poem “When I Met My Muse”:

…”I am your own
way of looking at things,” she said. “When
you allow me to live with you, every
glance at the world around you will be
a sort of salvation.”

 When we allow in the inspiration to write, we tend to our daily and other life responsibilities better because we know how important our time for writing is. The voices of those who would make us feel our writing goals are not to come first may still enter our my minds. Though we may always hear them ask if we are crazy, we must always answer that we are not. So it is worthwhile to remember these lines by Pablo Neruda in his poem “Poetry”:

something started
in my soul,
fever or forgotten
wings,
and I made my own
way,
deciphering
that fire
and I wrote the first
faint line,
faint, without
substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows
nothing…

I felt myself a pure
part of the abyss, I wheeled
with the stars,
my heart broke loose
on the wind.

Make 2013 your year of great writing.