Sitting at the last diner standing (So named because my other favorite diners all have gone out of business.), writing some poetry (my previous post) and I am thinking about being a poet.

I began my life as a poet because the woman I was dating took a “Creative Writing of Poetry” class and thought it would be a good idea if we took it together. (A lot of the things that have changed the course of my life were suggested by the women in my life. I pay attention to the women I love.). I took the course and it took. That was, I realized this morning, fifty years ago.

I came from a family where no one wanted to hear about feelings. It wasn’t just my feelings; it was anyone’s feelings, but mine were certainly included. I did not realize untill late in my father’s life that he was trying to protect me. He had been a sensitive young man in a rural Virginia farmland community and had been bullied relentlessly about his having and sharing feelings. He did not want me to go through that kind of bullying. So as a result, he shut down most any feeling I tried to express. He became, not meaning to, the kind of bully he was trying to protect me from. (Life is so often strange that way.)

So, far away at college, and suddenly being encouraged to reach down and write about feelings was a revelation to me. Finding a vocabulary of emotion came hard, but was freeing. I got an “A” in the class, but I could have cared less about the grade. Just entering a world of words and emotions was the real reward.

I kept writing long after the class. It became part of my life. I have notebooks and sheets of poems stashed away. When I was trying to describe how I was feeling in letters to my mom, I would send her a poem. When she died, I discovered she saved all of them, safely stashed away where my father could not find them.

There is a whole story of my father and mother and the ebb and flow of his expressing his emotions, a moral tale in a way, but that’s for another post perhaps.

I kept writing poetry. Even once I got married, got a “real” job, took on the responsibilities of work and family and owning things (or being owned by them, I have never quite been sure which it was), I continued writing. Now and again I would get one published, but the real value was not seeing myself in print, but just getting it out. I never managed to feel safe to express my feelings normally, so I wrote poetry, and through the writing, learned how to express it in the rest of life. I wrote and stuck the poems in piles in a trunk.

Until I stopped. Or nearly stopped.

I stopped in a period where my marriage and life were coming undone. I cannot to this day tell you if it was the coming undone that led to my not writing poetry any more; or the not writing that led to things coming undone. Certainly they are related in some way, but years of therapy never completely sorted that out.

Three things happened that got me back into it.

A friend of mine had heard me bemoan my lack of writing. Something that was far beyond “writer’s block” (which for me has always been a short-term thing that only happened for a day or two.). I had not, I wrote him (Hi Jack), written anything of value for years. He countered by taking years of emails that I had written him and compiled them into something he called “An Atkins Compendium”. There were essays and poems and memoirs in it, and eventually I took it and published it as “The Wisdom Letters.“. That was a long time ago and it continues to sell, much to my bemusement. But beyond the book, his kindness and work at editing and putting all those things together made me realize I had not dried up creatively.

At the same time, I was in therapy. (Hi Bethany!). And my therapist in all her probing (part of the job, but she was particularly good at it.) she discovered that I had written, but no longer wrote, poetry. She encouraged me to start again, AND, she said, I should post it on what was then a new medium: Blogging. Posting it, even if I only got 1-2 readers, would make me feel responsible to those readers (And I had an over developed sense of being responsible and she knew it. I told you she was good at probing.) and make me stick to it. That was nearly 20 years ago and she was right.

The last part of the return was a pastor at the local Presbyterian Church (Hi David!). I met him at a local coffee shop (no surprise there, huh?) where I spent a lot of time, including my writing time. We met, and there in the midst of my darkness, he extended grace and kindness and encouragement. Feeling that grace, being reminded of the grace of Christ, was the last thing I needed to push me back to writing regularly again. That was nearly 20 years ago.

And I have written every since.

Writing is half therapy. Half word play. Half sorting out life lessons. Yes, that adds up to more than 100%, but then poetry is for me, more than the sum of it’s parts. I write for me. I share with any of you who read.

Writing is part of how I push past my depression. Mornings are hard. Doing something that makes me rewire my thinking first thing in the morning pushes the dark thoughts back and lets me function. It helps me sort my feelings (still a struggle. I think it always will be.). So I am fairly disciplined in my writing.

Over the years, I have learned there is nothing unique about most of my feelings. Many of you share the same emotions and struggles and triumphs I have and so my poems have resonated with you. I cannot tell you how gratifying that is. When something I write touches you, it gives my struggles meaning.

And so, it has been fifty years. You can read the last 20 years of my verse here. If you had the patience or are masochist enough, you could read my whole journey over the past two decades by going back to the start of this blog. (You could, but I do not recommend it. Living in the moment is better.)

I dated a woman for a few years between the end of my marriage and my meeting and marrying my wife (Hi Cindy!). I had dated that same woman in college and she often told me that she always expected to see me on Leno (The Tonight Show for you young’uns.). She expected me to be famous. She told me over and over again. I know she meant it as a compliment as to the quality of my writing, but it came to feel like an indictment of the fact that I had done nothing professionally with my writing.

And so now I have done it for fifty years. Written these verses. I think I have become better at it in that time. I know I try to improve. Both is probing myself and trying to find the vocabulary of emotions that came to me late in life, and in the actual use of words.

Realizing that I have done it that long, makes me wonder if it is too late to become famous, or at least internet famous. Or do I even want to? Would I find myself writing for an audience instead of using it for therapy (Which I will always need, I think.). No, I think I will stay here in my corner of the internet. Writing and posting and trying to improve myself and being glad that people find me and at times are touched by our shared experiences.

That’s a lot more than I deserve – meaning. For all the struggles, God has been good to me, with a life that continues to stretch me, and in that stretching, makes me need to right.

On to year 51!

Tom