One of a poet’s greatest treasures is a well penned journal.

I have been keeping a journal for years.  Throughout my teen years, it was a way of tapping into  endless reaching  – mostly for happiness.  Something social media taps into all too readily.

A journal  is a kind of private confessional.  To say in secret what cannot be shared in public.  To wrestle demons.  To fight tireless battles, winning more than losing.  To grapple with obstacles and to prevail. To face the weight of burdens.  To wonder and dream without apology.

A journal is the ideal means of facing the darker aspects of the self.  Not to purge, but to embrace.  It allowed me to forgive my parents over the years, and to become grateful for their best efforts.  It allowed me to forgive and thank my late husband, and to reconcile missed opportunities.  It allowed me to forgive and thank my daughter for spoken and unspoken words.  Until we grew enough to see and hear each other without restraint.  It allowed me to forgive and thank myself for embracing what it means to be fully in the world.

A journal opens the mind and heart equally.  Making sense of so many competing feelings, largely in retrospect.  Very much like a shadow that dogs our steps, benign yet daunting.  Carl Jung wrote “….the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being.”

A journal allows poems to germinate.

Counting Coup

Shadows shield me

mostly from myself

saved from the need

to stand up and stand out

to be noticed as someone

who is unafraid

to make a difference

silence betrays nothing

as I wait and watch

biding my time

defining moments

come once only

changing everything

shedding pointless fear

I step out of the shadows.

cbienko

Time Enough