With just a few words, they manage to make our hearts and time stop in seconds. Reading them, we are speechless. They provoke an emotion that resonates within us like an undeniable truth. I discover that, as I glance over their letters, they take me by the hand and descend into the depths of mystery and beauty. I'm referring to the poems, which, in reality, I only recently learned to see and appreciate.

When I was a student, like many of you, I had to memorize some verses for homework, but I never fully understood them. I found them boring and as complicated as math. A poem requires time, which a young person doesn't have. We weren't raised to appreciate or create them, at least that's how this writer felt.

Now I'm amazed at the way a poet, guided by the "less is more" principle, deciphers the indecipherable through metaphors and similes. In other words, he expresses what we mere mortals feel and find difficult to put into words. I like short poems, which in a jiffy, shake you up. I understand that I'm taking my first steps as an avid reader of poetry. I'll go little by little, but it's a fact that I like them more every day. Is it age? Is it because I've slowed down my work pace? Or is it because I'm searching for that golden thread, to which William Stafford refers in his poem:

“That's the way things are”
There's a thread you follow. It runs through things.
that change. But he doesn't change.
People ask you about what you pursue.
You have to give explanations about the thread.
But it's hard for others to see it.
While you hold it you can get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt.
or dies; and you suffer and grow old.
Nothing you do can stop the unfolding of time.
You never let go of the thread.

Rumi, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Rainer María Rilke, Steve Taylor, William Stafford, Howard Thurman, Mary Oliver are some of the poets who touch my inner self and move me to reflect, and I am grateful for them. They lead me to an interior from which haste, screens, and pending tasks distract me.

My favorite, without a doubt, is Rumi, a Sufi mystic poet from the year 1200: “Your mission is not to find love, but to discover all the barriers you have created within yourself to prevent it from being seen.” You read this and are amazed at the crushing truth summed up in a couple of lines. No fuss, no drama, it knocks us out. Another example: “I have been a seeker and I still am, but I have stopped asking books and stars. I have begun to listen to the voice of my soul and my heart.” This phrase describes what has taken me years to discover: I am my path. Or: “Who am I, standing in the midst of all this bustle of thoughts?” What a question!

Another of my favorites is Juan Ramón Jiménez, a Spanish poet from the early 20th century, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1956:
“The moment”
It's leaving me, it's leaving me!
… It’s gone!
And with that moment, eternity passed me by.
Doesn't this happen to us every day, every moment? I think the way you make us see it is brilliant. And, to close, from Jimenez too:
“I am not me”
I am not me.
I am this
who goes by my side without me seeing him,
that, sometimes, I go to see,
and that, sometimes I forget.
He who remains silent, serene, when I speak,
He who forgives, sweet, when I hate,
the one who walks where I am not,
the one who will remain standing when I die.

So, I realize I've stopped doing for the sake of being. Becoming this woman who has been calmly accompanying me, and whom I finally recognize.

(Let’s rest… Happy Holidays! See you in January. Thanks.)