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Here it is, halfway through national poetry month and I have read only one poem and have not written any. Of course, neither have I drawn or painted anything or played any music or created any art of any sort. While I, like all of us, have art in my soul, the distance between thinking and realizing artistic expression is vast.

I am certain I would be a more complex, thoughtful, feeling, compassionate and insightful person if I cultivated the habit of reading poetry and scratching out even a draft poem a day. Limericks are the lowest hanging fruit:

Ken wanted to do his part / to further in himself art / doing it once every day / has the potential, it may / reach and touch into his heart.

That’s five lines and matching limericks’ rhyme scheme.

Haiku might get me farther toward complexity

I stretched for the stars / looked first close beneath my feet / I stumble on rocks.

For each of these, honestly, I stopped, paused, listened to myself, stared at my naval, contemplated the world outside its normal rhythms and aimed to be honest and original.

I can’t draw, paint, sing or play the guitar. But whatever the art attempt, partaking in it expands one’s horizon. And in our busy quotidian world, time-outs help to calm the mind and the nerves.

Poetry, art in my life, helps me to relax. That is a very different shining objects distraction. I also get to be in relationship with brave people who have risked sharing a bit of themselves and their views of the world by taking time and making the effort to create.

Art is thus also revealing.

Maybe efforts at art will get me closer to God. If art equals beauty and beauty equals truth, my heartfelt attempt, be it limerick, haiku or free verse has to be a good investment in my peace of mind.

Who knows: maybe I will hear my soul speak.

And what about that red wheelbarrow anyway?