Poetry is Born

Birthed from the yellow post-it notes tucked in my heart

covered in words I wrote yesterday

when the dog howled and the kettle screamed

and a sadness coursed through my body.

Notes with scrawled black letters

with words like Help and Grapes and Soul.

Birthed in a thick wooded forest

graceful birch limbs reach for

another stratosphere, blue sky,

small leaves jingle a tune - my poem

for waking up, for fresh beginnings.

Birthed in the backseat of a teenage car

with jeans unzipped, hands finding 

their way somewhere, anywhere

and mouths and tongues and warm skin 

against rough upholstery.

I reached for the draping of poems

to cover me, to understand.

He loves me. He loves me not.

Birthed from uncertainty,

a tangled ball of wool in my gut

that kittens play with all night.

Palms raised up at 2 am. Surrender.

Light on, I untangle strands 

ropy words meet paper— poetry

born in the night.

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NaPoWriMo Prompt: write a poem that obliquely explains why you are a poet and not some other kind of artist – or, if you think of yourself as more of a musician or painter (or school bus driver or scuba diver or expert on medieval Maltese banking) – explain why you are that and not something else!

I diverted from the prompt - writing about why I am a poet the idea of how my poems came to me, or were "born" arose, so I played with that.