Filling the blank pages with life

“There's a reason poets often say, 'Poetry saved my life,' for often the blank page is the only one listening to the soul's suffering, the only one registering the story completely, the only one receiving all softly and without condemnation.” – Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Estés, who celebrated her 72^nd birthday this week, uses her poems throughout her psychoanalytic books, spokenword audios, and stage performances as expressive therapy for others. A doctor who is a post-trauma recovery specialist and psychoanalsyst who has practiced clinically for 41 years, she also is the author of many books on the journey of the soul.

Her work, published in 37 languages, includes                         

Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of The Wild Woman Archetype, a New York Times' bestseller for a remarkable 145 weeks.  From that work and for Saturday’s Poem, here is:

Rainmaker: you could be the water

By the scent of water alone,
the withered vine comes back to life,
and thus…wherever the land is dry and hard,
you could be the water;
or you could be the iron blade
disking the earth open;
or you could be the acequia,
the mother ditch, carrying the water
from the river to the fields
to grow the flowers for the farmers;
or you could be the honest engineer
mapping the dams that must be taken down,
and those dams which could remain to serve
the venerable all, instead of only the very few.
You could be the battered vessel
for carrying the water by hand;
or you could be the one
who stores the water.
You could be the one who
protects the water,
or the one who blesses it,
or the one who pours it.
Or you could be the tired ground
that receives it;
or you could be the scorched seed
that drinks it;
or you could be the vine,
green-growing overland,
in all your wild audacity…

                                                                               

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