A Poet?

The robins sit back in anticipation,

as the waking world exposes , ever so honestly, 

the remains of Autumn's sacrifices.

Winter is being pulled like a dirty white quilt

from its seasonal bed, 

and the life beneath yawns and stretches

wiping the sleep from its eyes

as I sit here, not writing. 

Me... see link below

 I was thinking about spring and poetry and was reminded of a poem I had published about spring ( about awakening and writing), a few years ago. 

I called myself a poet in the bio of this poem. It never felt completely authentic to call myself that. Am I poet? The  idea of "poet" is conditionally fixed in my mind and I ...as this "little me" do not seem to fit into that ideation.  I feel what I do on paper is "not writing."   I don't see myself in the same light I see Emily Dickinson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Tennyson &  the Brownings, for example. 

I just write what would be called poems but it doesn't feel like "real writing".   These poems  lack, I am sure , in any artistic genius the above are known for.  I, as the person holding the pen or doing the typing, do not have any great skill.  But it isn't about "me", is it?  In fact, poetry...at least the awkward and unpolished stuff I write,  is more about "me" getting out of the way.  I am like the dirty white quilt of snow being pulled off something beautiful that is waking up inside me. All I, as this "me",  do is feel the urge. Then I step back mentally, as much as possible, and let it all come out.  I let spring emerge. I will tweak a bit here and there after I write but I don't do it to make a great publishable poem or to be a poet.  Poetry is just the way I sometimes  allow stuff  to come out of me.  It is just the way I sometimes speak...my tone of voice; the way I sometimes see with my blurry vision, the way I sometimes think with the busy mind I am desperate to tame....and it is just one way I make  sense of things with my ever changing perspective.   It feels more like "not writing" than writing...

I love poetry for what it does. It is healing and a wonderful step to awakening.  It removes veils,  brings buried truths up to the surface and lays them out in front of this "me" so I see there is so much more to Life...so much more to this being that I am.  It is definitely a type of "soul speak".  But I, as this "me" who writes poems (or "not writes"), am just speaking in a toddler's garbled way. So much I need to learn in order to perfect my soul speech. For that reason, I have a bit of hard time calling myself a poet. 

I do send poems out on rare occasions, with little to no expectation that they will be published. (It shocks me to death when they do get picked up). Why do I send them out if I have little self identity as a poet?  I am not quite sure.  It might have to do with the fact that I have so many poems in my collection, I feel I should "do" something with them before they all rot in obscurity here.  And maybe I want to share the message?  Though the poem itself might be imperfect, messy like the early part of spring, the message revealed from  beneath the melting snow  is worth sharing because it goes beyond this "me" identity. Maybe my soul wants to speak to other souls, even if  this "me"it is speaking through,  hasn't quite mastered the language ? 

Anyway, all is well in my world.